


how about an icebreaker?

by tnr92



Category: The Wilds (TV 2020)
Genre: Camp Counselor AU, F/F, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-09
Updated: 2021-03-02
Packaged: 2021-03-15 18:28:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 24,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29318655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tnr92/pseuds/tnr92
Summary: Toni and Shelby (and the rest of the Unsinkable 8) spend six weeks together as counselors at Camp Sunny Lake. Shelby and Toni clash and then they don't. AU.
Relationships: Shelby Goodkind/Toni Shalifoe
Comments: 242
Kudos: 1315





	1. Week 1

**Author's Note:**

> Small, light thing I'm doing for fun on the side; it should be six chapters for each week but it's not finished yet so we'll see.

Toni is spineless.

It’s the only justification she has for letting Martha talk her into this. Well, that and that she’s broke as fuck and wants money to afford alcohol and weed for the three or so weeks of summer she _won’t_ be stuck in the hellhole that is Camp Sunny Lake. 

It’s the summer before their senior year of college and Toni is stuck working as a camp counselor for six weeks. There are several things wrong with this. Firstly, she hates summer camps. Secondly, she hates children. And thirdly, she hates the other camp counselors. Well, most of them, anyway.

They’re all her age, give or take a couple of years, and there are sixteen of them in total: eight women and eight men. Toni keeps her distance from the boys and hates them by default, but as far as the girls go, she’s liked Fatin and Dot for about two days now, ever since they snuck out to the woods by the lake with a couple of joints and invited Toni along, and Leah’s alright because at least she mostly keeps her mouth shut. But Rachel’s too competitive, and so is Toni, so they’ve been clashing a little, and Nora’s Rachel’s sister so Toni dislikes her a little purely by association.

But Shelby Goodkind is the worst. 

It’s been four days and Toni has wanted to strangle her since about ten minutes in, when she’d greeted the elementary-school-aged campers with a cheery smile and a southern twang: “Welcome to Camp Sunny Lake, where there’s never a shortage of sun or fun!” 

It’s the line they’d been directed to deliver, but _God_ , have some dignity. 

Toni’s loathing had been cemented that evening, when she’d been showering off after leading a bunch of brats along a mountain path for two hours and Shelby had entered the shower directly next to hers and then began a rendition of some Jesus freak song Toni’d had to google the lyrics to discover was called “In Christ Alone”. 

She’s stuck with this bitch for six weeks and it already seems likely that only one of them is going to make it out alive. 

Worst of all, Martha actually _likes_ her, for some insane reason.

On the morning of day four, Toni feels herself being shaken awake in the cabin she has to herself, and when she grumbles and rolls over, she squints out at blonde hair and hears that southern accent tell her, “Up and at ‘em, Toni; you forgot to set your alarm again. They sent me to wake you up.”

“Am I in hell?” Toni mumbles up at her, and Shelby’s hand finds her wrist and then pulls her up into a sitting position. The blanket covering Toni slips down to her waist. Toni sleeps naked. 

“Oh, Lord,” Shelby gasps out, and then she releases Toni immediately and turns away. “I am so sorry.”

“Did you just see my boobs?” Toni asks her groggily, rubbing at her eyes to try to fully wake up. 

“I didn’t realize,” Shelby rushes to explain, and Toni sighs and rolls her eyes behind Shelby’s back, then lets out a loud yawn. 

“Whatever. Can you get out now before you see my vagina, too? I wouldn’t want to traumatize your heterosexual Christian eyes.”

Shelby glances over her shoulder hastily at that, her mouth opening like she wants to argue, but then she catches a glimpse of Toni again and swiftly turns around. “Well, you just can’t be late every day. Your kids will be stuck waiting in the dining hall for you.”

“Tell them to send Martha to wake me up next time,” Toni says.

“Why?”

Toni blinks at her back. “Because I don’t like you.”

“…Oh.” Toni’s surprised to hear that Shelby sounds a little hurt; she’s very obviously some sort of southern Christian conservative type, and Toni’s, well… it’s kind of obvious, and so Toni had assumed the dislike was mutual. “I guess I’ll go, then,” Shelby mumbles, and Toni actually feels a little bad for a second after she leaves. 

An hour later, they’re paired up to lead a canoeing outing on the lake and Toni’s guilt is long forgotten.

“Alright, guys, let’s get those paddles in the water! Do we all have our life jackets on? Remember, the most important thing is that we’re bein’ safe.”

“You’re fucking kidding me,” Toni groans from the canoe she’s sharing with an eight-year-old named Hannah, who turns and looks up at her with wide eyes.

“My mom says fuck is a bad word,” she says, and when Toni looks over at Shelby, Shelby’s staring back at the both of them like she’s mildly unsettled. Toni puts a hand over Hannah’s mouth and smiles thinly at Shelby.

“Kids. I don’t know where they pick up some of this shit.”

“Swear jar, swear jar!” several other children start chanting cheerfully nearby, because there’s one in the main office and Shelby, of course, has been the most adamant about enforcing it, and Toni prods at the nearest canoe with her paddle until it tips and sends the two chanting children inside sliding into the water with high-pitched screams. When they surface, they’re laughing, thankfully, and Toni shrugs her shoulders at Shelby, who looks at Toni with horror.

“This is not the right job for you,” Shelby says.

“It pays thirteen dollars an hour and I need weed money.”

“What’s a weed?” Hannah interjects.

“They’re bad plants,” Shelby supplies hastily, before Toni can give her the real answer. “Toni likes to garden.”

“It relaxes me,” Toni agrees, and she almost thinks she sees a hint of a smile on Shelby’s lips before Shelby twists away and starts paddling in another direction.

“Alright, campers, it’s a sunny day at Sunny Lake, so let’s start usin’ those paddles and have some fun before we run out of daylight!” Shelby calls out, and Toni scowls and then watches the two children she’d knocked into the water try to pull themselves back up into their canoe, slip off, and totally eat shit all over again. It cheers her up a little.

After lunch is more hiking, and Toni thankfully gets paired up with Martha this time. They lead their groups along the trail, doing head counts every ten minutes as they go, and Toni complains, “I don’t know if I’m gonna be able to make it through six weeks of this shit, Marty.”

“Swear jar, swear jar—!”

“Shut the fuck up.” Toni wrenches her gaze from a group of slightly terrified children and glares at Martha instead. “See? These brats are driving me nuts.”

“Toni, I think you could at least make a little bit more of an effort,” Martha sighs out. 

“I’m making an effort,” Tony replies, defensive.

“You’ve slept in late twice now and we’ve only been here for four days, the only time I’ve seen you smile was that time two of Rachel’s kids collided during that game with the blindfolds, and if Shelby actually fully enforced the swear jar you’d owe more money than you’ve earned.”

“Don’t defend Shelby,” Toni says, looking at her with disgust. “She’s unbearable.”

“Why, because she’s actually having a good time? I think it’s kind of nice that she’s trying.”

“Uh, I could do that sh—” Toni gives a sidelong glance to the nervous children trailing behind her, “—crap, too. It’s a bunch of phony cheerleader bull—BS.” Toni widens her eyes comically and claps her hands together, faking a bright smile. “Okay, campers, let’s get into your bunks for the night and have a great sleep so we can wake up tomorrow and start the day fresh! Literally kill me.”

“You could’ve spent the morning paired up with one of the boys instead,” Martha reminds her. “At least Shelby’s hot.”

Toni snorts. “Shelby is _not_ hot.” Martha stares at her expectantly, and Toni suddenly won’t meet her eyes. “She’s not _that_ hot.” Martha just keeps staring, and Toni heaves a sigh. “Okay, fine. But as it turns out, the whole southern Baptist homophobe thing is kind of a turn-off, so.”

“She’s homophobic? Did she say something?”

“She doesn’t have to,” Toni insists. “It’s like a whole vibe; they’re all like that. She’s probably a virgin, too.”

“What’s a virgin?” Hannah asks from somewhere behind her, and Toni gives Martha a silent look begging her to take this one.

“A drink that… tastes good.” Martha shrugs at Toni, who snorts at her again.

“That was pathetic.”

“I remembered too late that I can’t talk about alcohol, either,” Martha whispers. 

“Can’t talk about it, but tonight we’re drinking it,” Toni singsongs quietly. “I’ve heard Fatin’s hooking us up.”

Toni catches up with Fatin after her shower, who informs her that after their supervisors and the camp director have gone to sleep the girls are planning to sneak out to the campfire near the woods and drink together. Toni waits it out in her bed until after eleven o’clock, then catches up with Martha at her cabin, and together they walk out to the fire they can already see Fatin tending to. Dot’s next to her, holding one of several bottles of rum, and she greets them with a slurred, “Hey!” and offers a whole bottle to Toni. Leah’s already there, too, drinking alone on the other side of the fire and staring into the flames like her mind is completely somewhere else. Toni gives her a strange look and doesn’t bother her.

“Is this everyone?” Martha asks them, and Fatin shakes her head. 

“Rachel and Nora said they’d be out in a bit, and Shelby’s just finishing something up in her cabin. Everyone’s coming.”

“Shelby?” Toni echoes, surprised. “Isn’t this against the rules?”

“Guess she’s got a rebellious side,” Dot jokes, and Toni shakes her head dismissively and then chokes down a couple of gulps of the rum, then hands the bottle over to Martha.

An hour later, all eight of them are sitting on logs around the fire, laughing drunkenly together and slurring their speech, and much to Toni’s dismay the conversation eventually drifts to the boys. 

“Quinn is _not_ hot, Nora,” Fatin insists, waving a hand at her in protest while Nora tries to talk over her. “I’ll give you cute, but that’s it. Carlos is the hottest.”

“Uh, James?” Dot cuts in. “Have you seen his abs?”

“Ooh, so you like muscles on your men? And Nora’s into nerds.” Fatin surveys the group with a grin. “What about you, Marty?”

“Well-hung,” Toni supplies for her, and Martha elbows her sharply.

“Toni’s kidding. I just like sweet guys.” She gives Nora a friendly smile. “I think Quinn is cute, too.”

“Alright, that’s two votes Quinn,” Fatin rolls her eyes, “one vote Carlos, one vote James. Shelby, what’s your type?”

“Let me guess,” Rachel says, smirking at Shelby, who looks back at Rachel a little more casually than Toni’s used to seeing her and just sips at her rum, like she’s both amused and also interested. “It’s a dealbreaker if he doesn’t sing in his church’s choir, right?” Toni decides maybe she likes Rachel a little bit after all.

“She could surprise us,” Fatin suggests. “Maybe Shelby likes bad boys. Like _Carlos_ , perhaps? I could totally see you on the back of a motorcycle.”

“Is there a question in here somewhere?” Shelby wonders, raising an eyebrow. 

“The most physically attractive camp counselor,” Dot says, as though it’s obvious. “Who’s your type?”

“Physically?” Shelby asks. Toni sighs, sick of this line of conversation, and stands to wander off, but her legs feel a little wobbly from all the drinking. “Toni.” 

Toni takes a step at the perfectly wrong time because Shelby’s just said _her_ name, and her toe catches on the edge of the log and sends her sprawling out onto the ground with a thump and a quiet _oof_. She feels several pairs of eyes on her, and then Shelby adds, “Well, maybe not after that,” and then there’s a smattering of awkward, nervous laughter because it’s abundantly clear that no one’s sure whether or not to take her seriously. 

“Rachel, vote,” Fatin moves on past the tense moment, and Toni rolls over onto her back and sits up, staring hard at Shelby, who just sips at her drink again with the same casual demeanor, her eyes back on Rachel now as the other girls toss around a few more of the boys’ names. She doesn’t look at Toni at all.

“If you guys are just gonna talk about boys all night, I’m going to bed,” Toni warns, and they take pity on her and change the subject. Toni drinks heavily after that to try to get rid of the discomfort in her gut, but she can’t stop thinking about what Shelby’s just said. 

By the time she’s trying to deal with screaming children through a hangover the next morning, she’s sure Shelby had been trying to fuck with her. She’s actually a little bit mad about it; she feels like she was being mocked, maybe, because clearly Shelby knows she’s gay and maybe just wanted to rile her up a little. She wishes the girls had bothered to ask her for _her_ physical type so she could’ve lied and said Fatin—every ex-girlfriend aside from her latest one, Regan, has been blonde, but she would’ve relished the chance to say anyone other than Shelby, just to get back at her a little. 

The bright side of day five is that she doesn’t have to hang out with Shelby for any of it and gets to make her kids play dodgeball against Fatin’s, and as it turns out Hannah is a one-woman wrecking crew, a dodgeball prodigy, if you will, and Toni’s kids absolutely destroy Fatin’s and earn themselves a piece of candy to go with their lunch. The downside is that she has to do crafts with Carlos and his kids in the afternoon, and he sidles up to her and runs a hand through his hair and immediately she knows this is about to be some bullshit. 

“Hey, your name’s Toni, right?” he asks, checking her out, and Toni rolls her eyes and doesn’t even look at him, just keeps surveying her own children to make sure nobody cuts off anything important with their scissors or starts eating glue or something.

“Yep,” she says shortly.

“Are you from around here? Do you go to school nearby?”

She laughs and finally manages a glance at him. “Dude, your gaydar’s complete trash. Work on it.”

“Huh?” He looks confused.

“I’m a lesbian?”

“What’s a lesbian?” Hannah arrives on her other side just in time to ask, and Toni waves her away, annoyed.

“Can you _stop_ doing that? Jesus Christ. Get a dictionary.”

Hannah departs, a little downtrodden, and Carlos just says, “Oh. Sorry. Got it.” It’s a better reaction than Toni’d anticipated.

On day six, Toni has lifeguard duty while her kids swim around in the water, and Shelby’s are nearby learning canoeing again with Carlos’s. Toni watches him paddle up beside Shelby’s canoe and bump hers, and they laugh together and talk a little. Carlos raises his arm to flex a bicep at one point and Toni watches Shelby giggle at him while she feels it. 

When the lesson is over and Shelby’s making her way back toward her cabin alone to get changed, she passes by Toni’s lifeguard chair and Toni can’t help but blurt, “Guess we got your real answer, finally.”

Shelby pauses and looks over at her, and Toni tries to ignore how good her bikini looks on her now that she’s not wearing a life vest over it. “What was that?” Shelby asks, confused.

“Carlos. That’s your type.”

Shelby looks amused again. “So if I talk to someone that makes him my type?”

Toni scoffs. “Please. That whole ‘oh, feel my bicep’ shit is like textbook hetero flirting.”

“I was just bein’ nice,” Shelby says, “although I don’t see why it bothers you so much—”

“It doesn’t,” Toni snaps, feeling heat rise to her cheeks. “I’m just saying, don’t make shit up to fuck with me. I’m allowed to not like you without it turning into a whole stupid rivalry or something.”

Shelby furrows her eyebrows and shakes her head. “Okay, now I’m confused. What am I makin’ up again?”

“Your answer by the fire,” Toni elaborates, though she feels very embarrassed to be talking about it directly like this. 

“ _Oh_.” Shelby’s eyes fill with understanding. “I see. So, I said that you were my type, physically, and you think I lied to try to get back at you or rattle you or somethin’, because you don’t like me.” Shelby pauses, and takes Toni’s stony silence as confirmation. “Well, you’re wrong.” Her eyes drift down from Toni’s face to linger on her abdomen, and she blatantly checks Toni out for a moment and then turns and walks away. Toni’s surprised by the hot shiver she feels run down her spine. 

On day seven, Toni’s dragging a paddleboat out toward the lake when Shelby walks past with Fatin and Dot and Toni overhears her saying, “Oh, I love the Rockies! Me and my ex took a trip there last summer because she’d always wanted to see the—” and Toni’s head turns so swiftly that she nearly gets whiplash, and she accidentally drops the paddleboat right onto her foot, sending shooting pain running up her leg.

“Fuck!” she curses, shoving the boat away and sitting down to take off her shoe so she can assess the damage, Shelby and the other girls momentarily forgotten.

This is going to be a long fucking six weeks.


	2. Week 2

Toni’s minding her own business in the shower at the end of another long, miserable day when of _course_ Shelby takes it upon herself to make it all even worse. Toni’s already about at the end of her rope but when Shelby settles into the stall directly next to hers again, turns the water on, and sings, “ _Great is Thy faithfulness, O God my Father, there is no shadow of turning with Thee…_ ” Toni can’t help but speak up this time.

“Can you seriously fucking stop?” she snaps, slapping at the wall between their stalls a couple of times for good measure. “This is actually literal torture.”

“I’ve won a lot of pageants with this voice,” Shelby replies a little haughtily, and Toni gives the biggest eye roll of her life because Shelby being a pageant girl is the least surprising thing she’s ever heard. 

“Well, your song choice could use some work,” Toni says, and Shelby’s silent for a little while on the other side. Toni sighs with relief, happy to have some peace and quiet again. 

Abruptly, Shelby starts back up again. “ _The real me is a southern girl with her Levis on and an open heart—_ ”

“ _Not_ fucking Jessica Simpson, either, oh my God,” Toni groans out, cutting her off, and she hears Shelby huff on the other side. “Why do you even know that song?”

“Why do you?” Shelby asks, and Toni blushes.

“Whatever. Can’t you sing, like…? I don’t know…” She searches her mind for something that isn’t half bad but still feels like it could be in Shelby’s wheelhouse, but that Venn diagram feels like it doesn’t have a lot of overlap. 

“ _Tell me what you want, what you like, it’s oka-a-ay, I’m a little curious too,_ ” Shelby sings before Toni can make a suggestion, a hint of a smile audible in her voice, and Toni bites her lip and shakes her head, caught between reluctant amusement and a little bit of frustration, because she knows _exactly_ what Shelby’s doing here. 

She stays quiet and focuses on washing her body, listening to Shelby really get into it a few feet over. She has a very nice voice, if Toni’s being honest—though of course she’d never admit that aloud—and when Shelby belts, “ _Take me down into your paradise,_ ” Toni scrubs harder at her mud-caked legs and tries to ignore the way her body tingles a little. 

She leaves quickly after that, and later that evening Fatin and Dot invite her out to smoke again.

“So are you and Shelby gonna fuck or what?” Fatin asks her right as Toni’s taking a long drag from the joint, and Toni coughs harshly while Dot laughs at her. 

“What the fuck, Fatin?” she chokes out at Fatin’s smirk, glaring at her once she’s recovered.

“I’m just saying. You’re both lesbians.”

“Says who?” Toni knee-jerks. “Besides, it’s not a rule. You guys don’t fuck every straight guy you meet.”

Fatin looks like she wants to protest that a little, but Dot speaks first. “Okay, which one of you is supposed to be the one that isn’t gay?”

“Yeah, I’m gonna be honest, Toni,” Fatin adds, “If you’re trying to fool anyone, it’s not working.”

“Fuck off.” Toni rolls her eyes. “Obviously I mean her.”

“She has an ex-girlfriend,” Dot supplies. “She was telling us about it a couple of days ago.”

“Are we forgetting that she hit on your grouchy ass instead of choosing a guy? She’s a lesbian. And I’m sensing some sexual tension.” Fatin wiggles her eyebrows and Toni steals the joint in her hand away to take another drag.

“She’s not my type,” Toni half-lies, and Fatin laughs at her.

“Yes she is. Girls that look like that are everyone’s type.”

“Her personality,” Toni elaborates. “I’m not trying to get dragged to church every Sunday.”

Fatin sighs and shrugs. “Suit yourself. Maybe I’ll take a crack at it, then. I’ve always figured I’d try girls someday.” She sticks her hand out and Toni hands back the joint, trying to ignore the way her chest twinges at the idea.

“I don’t think she’s that type of girl,” Dot says before Toni can, and Fatin makes a small sound of displeasure and then blows a large cloud of smoke into the air. 

“Fair point. Toni, you down?”

“Fuck off,” Toni says again; she knows Fatin isn’t serious anyway, and besides, Toni honestly isn’t that type of girl, either. Fatin gives her a sly smile.

“I get it. You’re saving yourself for Shelby. It’s cool.”

“Maybe you can become a born-again virgin for her,” Dot suggests, and Toni scowls at the two of them as they giggle together, then turns and stalks away, intent on going back to bed.

“Oh, c’mon, Toni!” Fatin calls after her, only sounding a little bit sorry, and Toni gives them the finger and keeps walking.

Shelby drives her up the wall the next time they’re paired together for an activity; this time it’s a scavenger hunt, and when Toni loses track of one of her kids—it’s Hannah, again, of course—Shelby freaks out and immediately sends the rest of the kids back to the dining hall for dinner, then drags Toni into the woods to go look.

“I’m sure she’s around here somewhere,” Toni says; she’s a little worried, but her ego can’t bring herself to show it. “It’ll be fine.”

“I can’t _believe_ you are so freakin’ irresponsible,” Shelby huffs out, her eyes peeled as they scour the area together, and Toni shoots her an exasperated look.

“Uh, what did you expect me to do, exactly? There are twelve of them scattered off in different directions; I can’t keep track of everyone. She’s the one who got herself lost.”

“She’s a kid, Toni,” Shelby bites back, and then calls out, “Hannah!” When they don’t receive a response, Shelby sighs and runs an anxious hand through her hair. “The sun’ll go down soon,” she says, and Toni bites her lip, feeling a little bit of Shelby’s nervous energy rubbing off on her.

“I mean, how far could she really have gone?”

“These woods go on for miles,” Shelby says, and then points in a different direction. “You search that way.”

“What, so you can get lost too?” Toni argues; deep down she doesn’t particularly want to be stuck alone in the woods in the dark herself, though.

“I know my way around a forest,” Shelby shoots back, and her voice is a little haughty again. “My daddy used to take me out huntin’ almost every weekend.”

“Shocking,” Toni says sarcastically. “How about you use some of those tracking skills now, then?”

“I will.” Shelby folds her arms across her chest and looks around. “I imagine you don’t have anythin’ to bring to the table.”

“Well, not all of us grew up in places where cousin marriage is still legal,” Toni snaps back. “Or encouraged.”

“That’s real clever, Toni; I’ve definitely never heard that one before.”

“I’m surprised you—” Toni starts, ready to insult her again, and there’s about half a second where she stumbles over her words a little, considering that it might be too mean, but then she goes on anyway, “—even know you like girls; I mean, shouldn’t someone as religious as you be all repressed and everything?”

Shelby shoots her a dark, angry look, and Toni knows immediately that she was right in thinking she might be hitting a nerve with that one. Finally, Shelby says, “Let’s just find this little girl, Toni,” and Toni is happy to let the topic drop.

They find Hannah ten minutes later, curled up under a large tree and napping. 

“I hate this fucking kid,” Toni says as she stares down at her, and Shelby kneels beside Hannah and gently shakes her awake, then gives her a piggyback ride all the way back to camp. 

A few days later, Martha suggests, “Maybe you two just need some time to bond or something. Like, talk it out. I’ve hung out with her a little and I think you actually have some stuff in common.”

“Other than the gay thing?” Toni asks, doubting it, and Martha rolls her eyes.

“Yes, obviously. Like with your families and stuff.”

Toni gives her a sharp look and suddenly Martha looks like she knows she’s said too much. Toni doesn’t speak to her dad at all and her mom is always either high or in rehab; Martha’s pretty much her only real family, as far as she’s concerned. 

“Don’t tell her I said anything,” Martha rushes to say.

“Don’t worry, Marty; I honestly don’t care about her,” Toni replies.

Later that day, she’s forced to take her kids out to the field not far from the lake, and Shelby’s kids absolutely destroy Toni’s in the ultimate frisbee game that follows, and normally Toni wouldn’t care about some stupid children’s frisbee game but she gets a little heated that they’re losing to Shelby, and by the end of it her kids are all even more intimidated by her as they stalk off to eat lunch.

“You need to be encouraging,” Shelby tells her, falling into step beside her as they head to the dining hall, and Toni looks at her, annoyed.

“I don’t think I asked.”

“I’m just sayin’. I don’t think they like you very much.”

“Well, I was the captain of my high school basketball team, and a little bit of tough love went a long way toward the two state championships we won. I think I know what I’m doing.”

“And I mentored younger pageant girls so that they could break my winnin’ record of twenty-seven sashes in four years, so I think I have a little bit of useful advice, too.”

Toni stops in place and stares her down, and Shelby follows her lead and turns to meet her, looking equally heated.

“Fine,” Toni says. “Wanna bet on it?”

Shelby gives a short laugh like she thinks it’s a silly idea, but then she crosses her arms and asks, “What kind of bet?”

“My kids against your kids. We’ll play tomorrow. Best coach wins.”

Shelby raises an eyebrow. “Ultimate frisbee?”

Toni shakes her head. “Dodgeball.” Shelby’s kids skew a little bigger and a little older, giving them what would appear to be a slight advantage on the face of it, and Toni knows right away that her trap is going to work. 

“And if you win?” Shelby asks.

“If I win…” Toni bites her lip, thinking it over, and then her gaze drifts to the lake behind them and she suddenly has the perfect idea. “Then tomorrow night, you, Sister Christian, have to go down with me to the lake at midnight, strip down, and skinny dip.”

“Fine,” Shelby says evenly. “And if I win… _you_ have to do it.”

Toni laughs. “You’re stealing my ideas already. Good luck, Shelby.” She offers her hand and Shelby gives it a grudging shake.

Toni doesn’t even bother using any actual coaching techniques, but it’s a little cute in a pitiful way to see Shelby out on the field with her kids in the early morning, eschewing the activity they’re supposed to be doing in favor of dodgeball practice. She’s actually determined to win this, Toni realizes, and she can’t help but wander over while her own group is tie-dying white T-shirts in the grass nearby. 

“No spyin’,” Shelby tells her the instant she’s close enough to get a good look at what’s going on, and Toni hides a smile because again, it’s kind of cute that she’s trying.

“I don’t need to,” Toni teases. “I have a secret weapon.”

“We’ll see,” Shelby says, and things almost feel friendly between them for a moment before Toni retreats. She offers a small wave before she goes, then wonders to herself why the fuck she did that. Shelby seems a little surprised, too, but waves back anyway.

They have the dodgeball game in the evening and by then the bet has spread around to the rest of the female counselors a little bit, so Martha, Fatin, and Rachel stop by to watch. Toni’s sitting on the bleachers in the gym building while Shelby gets the kids set up for the game, and Fatin takes a seat next to her and goes, “You’re a manipulative little bitch, Toni.” Fatin’s seen what Hannah can do, so she knows what’s coming. “Skinny-dipping, really?” she adds. “God, you’re so horny.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Toni asks, and Fatin raises an eyebrow at her.

“You could’ve asked for anything and you asked her to get naked.”

“That’s not the point. Like, at all.” Toni shakes her head, unsettled by the implication, and Fatin laughs a little bit but lets it go and joins Rachel and Martha elsewhere on the bleachers instead.

The game isn’t even that close; Hannah is a blur on the court, taking out Shelby’s kids left and right until it’s three against one at the end. Two of Toni’s boys and Hannah all pelt Shelby’s little boy with three balls at once and he falls flat on his ass and starts crying, and Shelby rushes over to comfort him. Toni actually feels a little bit bad about it and calls out, “Can you guys chill out next time? He’s like six years old.”

“Total domination!” one of the boys roars in response, pounding his chest with two fists, and Toni can’t help it; she cracks and laughs just a little bit. 

She brushes past Shelby on her way out a few minutes later and teases, “See you at midnight?” and Shelby purses her lips and glares but there’s something that looks a little like amusement in her eyes, too.

Toni gets to the lake on time and waits for ten minutes by the dock, and just when she’s nearly convinced that Shelby’s chickening out and Toni’s going to have to work out some way to get her back for it, she hears footsteps in the grass behind her.

“You’re late, Becky,” Toni greets her.

“I had to finish fillin’ in my calendar for next week,” Shelby says, and Toni scowls at her. 

“You actually do that shit?”

“It’s how I keep up with the schedule?” Shelby says with a little confusion, like it’s obvious. “Do you even have any idea what you’re supposed to be doin’ tomorrow?”

“Nope,” Toni says. 

“Lord, you’re so bad at this job,” Shelby sighs out, but then she moves past Toni and walks a few steps down the dock toward the water, glancing back at her once she’s come to a stop. “So, I guess we should get this over with. I’m surprised there aren’t more witnesses.”

Toni knows _exactly_ why the other girls have chosen to leave them alone for this, given all of Fatin’s and Dot’s teasing, but she doesn’t dare reveal that to Shelby. “When you’re ready,” she says idly, and Shelby turns away and kicks her flip flops off. There’s a full moon out tonight and Toni sees every ripple of Shelby’s back and shoulder muscles once she’s reached down and tugged her shirt up and off. She slides her shorts, down, too, and then folds them both neatly and places them beside her on the dock. 

Shelby has a killer body; Toni’s grudgingly acknowledged that since the first day, and she tries hard not to think about what Fatin had said earlier, because she really _had_ only thought of this as something funny and a little dirty to make someone as religious as Shelby do, but now Fatin’s got her thinking there’s some underlying unconscious thing going on. It doesn’t help that right now seeing Shelby naked doesn’t seem like the worst thing in the world. 

Shelby doesn’t check to see if Toni’s looking at her and also doesn’t tell her not to watch, and Toni isn’t sure why that is—maybe she feels like Toni’s won the bet and can do what the fuck she wants, or maybe she doesn’t mind or even wants her to watch, and Toni hopes a little bit that it’s the first one because even the thought of the second one makes her heart beat uncomfortably faster. 

Shelby unclips her bra and then sets it down on top of the clothing pile, and then Toni sees her inhale deeply—it’s the first sign that Shelby’s nervous at all, actually—and then bend over and slide off her underwear. 

The moonlight is doing wonders for Shelby’s body and Toni forgets to at least pretend she’s not staring, and thankfully for her Shelby just walks to the edge of the dock without turning around and then swan-dives right into the water. When she surfaces, Toni gets ahold of herself and meanders over to the edge of the dock, smirking down at her while she treads water just a few feet away. 

“Surprisingly classy,” Toni compliments. “For a few minutes there I thought you’d be a sore loser.”

“Maybe I should be,” Shelby says, arching an eyebrow up at her. “I never had a chance, did I?” She swims back to the dock and reaches up to grab ahold of the edge, then pulls herself up out of the water until her forearms are resting flat on the wood and all Toni can see are her arms and head—though the knowledge that half of Shelby’s naked body is exposed just out of her line of sight is a little distracting.

“No,” she confesses, and Shelby rolls her eyes at her, but she’s smiling. 

“Bet you were laughin’ at me all day,” she presses, and Toni smirks again.

“Yeah, kind of.”

“You play dirty.” Shelby extends a hand to Toni. “Help me out.”

“Okay.” Toni’s a lot distracted, now, images of Shelby rising from the water, her front dripping wet and fully exposed dancing behind Toni’s eyelids, and she reaches out and grasps Shelby’s hand.

That’s a mistake. Shelby pulls back and sends her crashing into the water in an instant, and when Toni comes up sputtering Shelby’s inches away from her, laughing hard. Toni’s glare fades pretty quickly because yeah, she probably deserved that. 

“Fair,” she admits, a little breathless from the shock of the cold water, and Shelby grins at her.

“Not quite. I don’t think we’re even yet.”

Toni swims over to the dock and grips the edge with one hand, because now her sneakers are water-logged. She uses her other hand to maneuver them off and place them on the dock, and then makes short work of her socks. Shelby settles beside her and holds onto the dock, too, and Toni says, “Seems pretty even to me.”

“You made me a bet I was never gonna win,” Shelby points out. “I think the whole bet should be nullified.”

“Well, I hate to break it to you, Shelby, but you’re already naked,” Toni laughs, and what Shelby says next distracts her so much that she doesn’t notice two shadowy figures rushing across the field toward the docks. 

“Right. So there’s only one way to make this even.” 

Shelby’s smiling at her, her eyebrows raised expectantly, and Toni’s suddenly very aware of how close she is; there’s only maybe a foot between them and she can see the drops of water clinging to Shelby’s eyelashes. 

“Uh,” she starts, dumbly, and then out of nowhere Fatin and Dot come storming down the dock, laughing hysterically. Fatin swipes up the pile of Shelby’s clothes, Dot takes her flip flops, and Toni barks out, “Hey!” but only manages to pull herself up partway onto the dock before they’re both already halfway back across the field again, fleeing in the direction of the counselors’ cabins. “Fuck,” Toni mumbles, and then sinks back down into the water and looks at Shelby guiltily. “I swear I didn’t tell them to do that.”

“Well,” Shelby sighs out. “That’s a problem.”

“You can wear my clothes,” Toni suggests after a moment; she’s sure she has way less shame than Shelby and it won’t kill her nearly as much to have to walk back to her cabin in her bra and underwear. Shelby can wear her shirt and her shorts. 

“That’s sweet of you,” Shelby says quietly, and Toni reaches down and tugs her shirt up and off, then does her best to squeeze the waterlogged material dry before she places it on the dock. She does the same with her shorts, and then looks at Shelby.

“Might chafe,” she warns, half-kidding, and Shelby presses her lips together like she’s hiding a smile.

“It’s not a long walk.”

Toni doesn’t have anything to say to that, so they just rest by the dock together for a moment of awkward silence, face to face, and somewhere along the line Toni remembers what Shelby’d said right before Dot and Fatin had showed up. She knows Shelby’s thinking about it, too, because she moves her hand along the dock and inches forward toward Toni just slightly, and they’re so close; Toni swallows thickly and tries to forget that the girl inches away from her is naked, hot, and gay, but it’s impossible to forget the latter when Shelby snakes an arm around to Toni’s back beneath the water and then unclasps her bra quite easily with one hand, like she’s done it a hundred times before. She peels it away from Toni’s front and then reaches up to place it on the dock, and then just looks at Toni like she’s daring her to finish the job.

Toni’s heart is racing as her own fingers move down to her waist and she bends her knees, slipping the underwear down and off and then lifting it out of the water. Shelby’s eyes don’t leave hers as she places it next to the rest of her clothes.

“There,” Shelby says quietly, and finally her eyes dip down to look at Toni’s mouth. “Now we’re even.” And then she’s sliding in closer again and the hand she still has on the dock is sliding with her, until it’s almost touching Toni’s. Her other hand rises out of the water and cups Toni’s cheek, and Toni closes her eyes, accepting the inevitable, and then Shelby’s lips are on hers and their bare bodies are touching and Toni feels like every inch of her is burning hot even in the cool lake water. 

Shelby kisses her slowly and tentatively at first; for all her bravado, it’s like she’s feeling Toni out now that they’ve gotten this far, and it’s Toni who tilts her head further and slants her mouth against Shelby’s, increasing the pressure. Shelby lets out the tiniest little moan but the way it makes heat roll through Toni’s body it’s like it was so much more than that. Shelby’s chest is pressed against hers and their abdomens keep brushing and it drives Toni so completely wild in a way she’d never expected from a girl like Shelby—a girl who has completely shocked her tonight, for the record, because she’d have never in a million years imagined Shelby would make the first move like this, flirting or no flirting. 

Shelby’s hand slides around to the back of her neck to hold her in place and then she’s teasing Toni’s lips apart with her own and then tasting her, and Toni groans into the kiss and feels her fingers twitching on the dock; she desperately wants to touch Shelby as much as she possibly can but she can’t both make out with her and also tread water, so she just clutches hard at the wood and soon she feels Shelby’s fingers slipping to rest over her own. Toni’s free hand slides around to Shelby’s back, and they part for a moment and then tilt their heads to change the angle, kissing again and again, and Toni can feel her heart racing nervously and her pulse jumping every time Shelby does something new with her tongue. 

It’s quiet around the lake; when Shelby breaks their kiss to move her lips to Toni’s neck instead, Toni breathes hard and registers only the distant chirping of cicadas, the occasional drip of water from their hair, and the sound of Shelby’s lips on her skin. She’s never slept with a girl she hasn’t at least been on several dates with first but Shelby sucks and licks at her neck with a surprising amount of aggression and she starts thinking about making an exception. They’re so close now that she can feel all of Shelby’s front pressed against her.

“Should we stop?” she asks, because she knows Shelby’s religious and this seems like a lot for her, too, even if she’d initiated it, and Toni’s voice sounds completely wrecked, like it’s not even her own. Shelby kisses her jaw and then her lips, and Toni feels her nod but the way she’s tasting Toni’s mouth again says otherwise. 

“I think so,” Shelby breathes out, but when Toni pulls back a little Shelby chases her lips and Toni gives in. She makes herself slow their kiss instead, until Shelby takes the hint and follows her lead, and then it’s deep and languid and it feels a little like they might be cooling down. Shelby breaks the kiss, finally, and presses her mouth across Toni’s jaw, back down to her neck, and the heat inside Toni simmers but doesn’t quite feel like it’s going to boil over anymore. 

She sighs and then whispers, “Shit,” biting down on her bottom lip as she reflects on what’s just happened between them, and Shelby sucks on her neck a little but doesn’t seem to be trying to escalate things. “You’re seriously gay,” Toni marvels, because it had almost seemed too good to be true, if she’s being fully honest with herself, and Shelby lets out this completely girly giggle against her neck and then nips at Toni’s ear. 

“Mhmm.” Toni’s hand withdraws reluctantly from Shelby’s back, because it’s clear they’re working on ending this now, but then Shelby whispers to her, “And you’re _seriously_ my type,” and Toni wonders why the fuck she’d thought it was a good idea to slow down at all. 

But it’s too late; Shelby withdraws from her and licks her lips, her eyes dark and pupils visibly blown in the moonlight, and Toni just stares back at her, mesmerized. 

Shelby breaks their gaze first and turns to lift herself up out of the water, and Toni lets out a shaky breath and then follows her lead, suddenly too shy to look at her while they put Toni’s clothes on together. 

Oh, this is going to be _such_ a long fucking six weeks.


	3. Week 3

Toni walks into the dining hall for breakfast the following morning, on the first day of the third week, and immediately she notices two things.

The first is that Fatin, Dot, and Martha are all eating together, and as soon as Toni enters the room, they all turn and look at her with interest. Fatin can’t hide her smirk.

The second is that one table over, Shelby is eating alone.

Toni grabs a tray, some scrambled eggs, and a biscuit, and sits down directly across from Shelby. “Hey,” she says shortly, still a little groggy from the five hours of sleep she’d gotten, and Shelby seems surprised for a moment, and then just looks at her warmly.

“Good mornin’,” she says, and Toni watches her take a bite of the biscuit in her hand. Shelby chews like she’s hiding a smile behind it, and Toni’s eyes drop to her tray and she focuses on her food and tries not to think about Shelby’s mouth. 

Fatin has apparently been elected to run reconnaissance for the other table—or else has just given herself the position—because suddenly she’s standing beside Toni and greeting them, leadingly, “Hey, ladies. How was last night?”

Toni’s cheeks get warm but Shelby just offers Fatin a friendly smile. “It was nice. Do you have my clothes?”

Fatin seems a little displeased that she hasn’t been given details immediately. “They’re in my cabin.”

“I’ll stop by for them later, then.”

Fatin gives a short sound of acknowledgement and then stares them both down for a moment, eyes darting back and forth between them. Shelby’s poker face is immaculate, but Toni curses herself on the inside because she can feel more heat rising to her cheeks. Fatin’s eyes settle onto her and stay there and then a slow smile spreads across her lips. “Hey, Toni,” she starts, teasing, and Toni eats a little faster.

“Kinda busy, Fatin,” she says with a mouthful of scrambled eggs.

“You’re blushing,” Fatin tells her. “That’s pretty cute.”

“Fuck off,” Toni mumbles, and Fatin laughs and mercifully returns to her own table, like she’s already gotten the answer she wanted. Toni’s thoroughly embarrassed and pretty nervous about looking at Shelby again, but when she finally brings herself to do it, Shelby just smiles at her a little and then takes another bite of her biscuit. 

After breakfast, parents start showing up to take their kids back home; they’re due to get a new group that afternoon to start the third week. Toni takes the extra time to seek Hannah out and fist-bump her goodbye, and tells her, “See ya, wing-woman,” because Hannah sort of unintentionally did her a huge solid yesterday.

“What’s a wing-woman?” Hannah asks.

“A badass dodgeball player,” Toni replies.

Hannah runs back to her parents calling out, “Mom, Dad, I’m a badass!” and Toni swiftly turns away and pretends to be busy with something else before she can see their response to that.

Before the next group arrives, all sixteen of the counselors get called into a room for a meeting with one of the supervisors. He’s tall and lanky and wearing thick-rimmed glasses, and Toni thinks he walks like he has a stick up his ass. She rolls her eyes as they take their seats and he greets them, “Alright, guys, I’m disappointed to be calling you all here today, but it looks like we’re going to have to make this clear for the fifth consecutive year: it is expressly forbidden here at Camp Sunny Lake for there to be any sort of…” He clears his throat, a little uncomfortable suddenly, and Toni looks around with confusion, wondering what the fuck is going on. Several of the other counselors seem just as lost. “… _fraternization_ between the camp counselors.”

Toni sinks down in her seat, and Fatin turns around in the front row to glance at her, looking absolutely thrilled at her humiliation; Toni’s shocked she doesn’t just burst into laughter then and there. Three seats down from Toni, Shelby looks a little uncertain. 

“So. Consider this your warning as a collective. Any further violations will result in your immediate termination. Thank you.”

“Do they have fucking cameras everywhere or something?” Toni mumbles to Martha as they walk back to their cabins, and Martha looks a little smug.

“So something _did_ happen.”

“It wasn’t my fault,” Toni says, immediately getting defensive, and Martha just laughs at her.

“Shelby had to make the first move?”

“That’s not—” Toni sputters, having not expected that response at all, and her cheeks color all over again. “I would have,” she lies. “She was just faster.”

“Uh huh.” They reach Martha’s cabin and Martha gives Toni one last amused look and then disappears inside.

They have a few hours before orientation, so Toni decides to take a nap, but she’s just gotten under the covers when someone knocks on the door to her cabin and then pushes it open. Toni’s ready to get angry but then she sees blonde hair and her protest dies in her throat. 

“Hey,” Shelby greets her, peering inside. “Can I come in? I brought your clothes back.”

“Yeah.” Toni can already feel butterflies in her stomach a little bit and she kind of hates herself for it. 

Shelby slips inside and places Toni’s shirt and pants down on her desk, and Toni expects her to turn and leave right away, but instead she hesitates for a moment and then sits down in the desk chair. “So, I had this idea for tonight, to celebrate makin’ it through the first session. I was thinkin’ we might all meet up at the campfire again and maybe do some ice breakers or somethin’. Play some games. The guys and girls, this time.”

“Okay,” Toni says.

“I just wanted to make sure you’d come,” Shelby elaborates.

“I will.”

Shelby smiles at her. “Great.”

They just look at each other for a moment, and Toni tries to think of something to say, wondering to herself if they’re just going to keep on not talking about last night. Finally, she glances down at her own bed. “I was just gonna nap, so.”

Shelby abruptly seems to find herself, and for the first time today she looks a little frazzled. “Right! Yeah, that’s—of course.” She stands. “Well, I’d ask you to walk me to the door, but you might be naked under there again.”

Toni raises both of her eyebrows at that because she’s pretty sure it was some kind of attempt at a joke. Shelby looks mortified at herself and doesn’t hide it very well. “I am,” Toni says, because it’s the first thing that comes to mind and she desperately wants to move past whatever that just was from Shelby… and _that_ response isn’t much better, and now Toni’s embarrassed, too. “I don’t know why I said that,” she blurts.

“Don’t worry about it.” Shelby looks a little relieved that Toni’s fucking this up just as much as she is. “Seems like at the rate we’re goin’ it won’t be the last time one of us is naked around the other.” Toni blinks wide at her and Shelby stammers through a correction, “I just meant between this, and the showers—”

“Can you go before we both die of embarrassment?” Toni finally asks, and Shelby nods enthusiastically.

“Yes. I’ll see you tonight.”

They get through the afternoon just fine and when Toni sneaks out late that night to go meet at the campfire, one of the boys is passing out red solo cups and there’s a fold-out table with a few different alcohols, juices, and sodas atop it. 

“If any of the supervisors show up,” one of the boys announces, “it’s every man for himself. Just fucking scatter, guys; they can’t catch all of us.” There’s a smattering of laughter at that and Toni just grabs a mixed drink and finds a seat next to Martha on a log. 

She’s a little impressed that this was all Shelby’s idea, honestly, and the group lets Shelby take the lead on it too; actually just sits back and watches her as she stands by the fire and says, “Alright, so I was thinkin’ we might start with something light and fun. Maybe ‘Never Have I Ever’?”

Everyone’s a little tipsy already and pretty amenable to anything, so Shelby starts with, “Never have I ever had a one-night stand,” and several of the guys drink, along with Fatin, Leah, and Dot. Toni notices Shelby glancing at her, like she’s waiting to see whether or not Toni’s going to drink, and Toni doesn’t.

They go around the circle slowly until it reaches Fatin, who says, “Alright, let’s get to what we all wanna know after that meeting today. Never have I ever… let’s go with the bare minimum. Who’s made out with someone else here?”

Toni locks eyes with Shelby and then for some bizarre reason Shelby doesn’t even consider lying; just immediately lifts her drink to take a sip while Fatin’s eyes are on the both of them, and Toni groans internally and then drinks, too. 

“Nora!” Rachel cries out at the other end of the circle too, though, and that attracts the most attention. Quinn looks ashamed as he drinks beside her.

“They caught us in the rec room,” Quinn admits, and Fatin guffaws at this revelation and then glances between Shelby and Toni again.

“Did anyone else drink?” a boy named Marcus asks, and Dot points Shelby and Toni out immediately, smirking.

“Wait, with who?” James asks.

“Each other; who else?” Fatin tells him, and the smile he fixes them with is one Toni’s seen a few too many times.

“Seriously? Can we get a live reenactment?”

A few of the boys laugh at that and Toni’s free hand clenches into a fist. She sees Shelby avert her gaze to the ground and feels Martha’s hand on her thigh, preemptively grounding her before she thinks about doing something she’ll regret.

“Don’t be a fucking creep,” Fatin bites at him, and suddenly the whole circle is tense.

“Relax, it was just a joke,” James says.

“Jokes are funny,” Dot replies, and finally Shelby seems to get her bearings.

“Guys,” she cuts in abruptly, attracting the group’s attention. “Let’s just play something else. How about ‘Truth or Dare’?”

They switch games, and things are a little tense around the group for a while, but as time goes on and everyone continues drinking they start to relax again; Toni watches Fatin plant an overdramatic smooch on Dot on a dare from Nora, Marcus goes streaking to the lake and back, a few of the boys make each other chug drinks, and the game goes on and on until even Toni’s too caught up in the group shenanigans and too affected by her own drinking to even remember the moment with James. 

Then he gets his third chance of the night to select a target, and he’s totally trashed now—almost all of the boys are—as he fixes his gaze to Shelby and smirks. “Blondie, truth or dare.”

“Truth,” Shelby answers; she just might be the most sober of them all and immediately half the group starts booing at her for her answer, because they’ve been almost exclusively doing dares for a while now. Toni even spots Fatin giving a half-hearted thumbs down from where she’s drunkenly sprawled out halfway across Dot’s lap. Shelby huffs and rolls her eyes. “Fine, dare.”

James beams at her, but the uncomfortable mischief in his eyes is back. “Okay. I dare you to make out with _her_.” He points at Toni, and this time Martha’s too slow to stop Toni from popping to her feet and staring him down. A chorus of hesitant “whoa”s greet her angry eyes, mostly from the boys, and James says, “C’mon, _they_ did it,” gesturing to Fatin and Dot, the latter of whom is swaying drunkenly and looking like she’s worried she’ll puke if she opens her mouth. Fatin might be asleep now. 

“That’s different and you know it,” Toni slurs at him, and Martha reaches out to place a warning hand on her arm. 

“Toni,” she says, like she doesn’t want Toni to waste her energy fighting with him, but she’s surpassed by Shelby herself, who stands up and moves to Toni’s side, grabbing her wrist.

“Fine,” Shelby says to James, “but you didn’t say anythin’ about where we had to do it.” And then she tugs Toni away from the campfire to choruses of frustrated groans and boos, mostly from James himself. 

“Lemme fight him,” Toni grumbles, stumbling drunkenly away with her, but she doesn’t have the energy to pull herself free from Shelby like this and simply goes along for the ride anyway, and soon they’re on the other side of the field and still going, leaving the group by the fire far behind. 

Shelby takes her all the way past the lake, following the edge of the tree line, and Toni gets a little unsteady eventually and feels her stomach turn. “Wait,” she says abruptly, and when Shelby pauses, Toni turns away from her and bends over to puke into the grass. Shelby immediately reaches out for her arm to support her and rubs at her back. “You don’t have to kiss me,” Toni blurts, and then pukes one more time for good measure. 

Shelby finds them a spot to sit down together in the grass about ten minutes later, very far away from the vomit, and Toni feels like shit but her head is clearer now, enough that she can recognize how nice Shelby’s being taking care of her like this. “Did I ruin your thing?” she asks, feeling a little guilty, and Shelby smiles and shakes her head. 

“No, I’m sure they’re all havin’ a good time.”

“Not you,” Toni points out, and Shelby’s smile widens.

“Oh, I’m very entertained.”

“Fucking rude,” Toni complains, only half-meaning it; her head’s still spinning a little bit. “You’re really telling me that kind of shit doesn’t piss you off?”

“He’s an idiot,” Shelby says. “I’ve seen worse.”

Toni stares at her and thinks of Martha’s comment about their family situations being not so different, and wonders if Shelby doesn’t talk to her parents, either. “Where’d you grow up?” she asks, finally, right as the world stops spinning and she starts to feel herself sobering up a little.

“Texas,” Shelby says, and given her accent it isn’t all that surprising to Toni. “My hometown is very small.”

“Did you like it there?”

Shelby thinks on that for a moment, like maybe it’s complicated. “I liked some things. The sense of community. Some of the people. I wouldn’t trade my best friend for the world. But some things were difficult.”

“I’ve been out since I was thirteen,” Toni tells her, because she knows exactly what difficult things Shelby’s talking about, and Shelby gives her a small smile.

“That sounds nice,” she says, and Toni blinks at her and waits for her to offer more about herself, but she doesn’t. Instead, she adds, playfully, “I’m takin’ a rain check on that kiss, just so you know.”

Toni laughs because it’s so unexpected. “You’re gonna get us both fired.”

“I’ll have you know I’m an expert at kissin’ girls without anyone findin’ out about it.” It’s a little bit of a confession, in lieu of Shelby telling her when she’d come out herself, and Shelby’s smirk is hot on her and Toni wishes she hadn’t puked fifteen minutes ago because she really wants to be making out with her right now.

“Didn’t work out so well last time,” Toni points out, and now it’s Shelby’s turn to laugh.

“Oh, and whose fault was that?”

Shit, she’s right; Toni’d walked right into that one. “Yeah, I guess I did fuck that up.”

“The next one will be when you least expect it,” Shelby jokes, but Toni blushes a little bit at the thought anyway and watches her finish, “and no one’ll find out about it.”

Shelby shifts away from her and leans back on her elbows, then, tilting her head back to look up at the stars, and Toni settles beside her and does the same for a while, though she spares a glance toward Shelby every half a minute or so. The silence between them is comfortable and natural, like they’ve known each other for years already, and Toni doesn’t expect it to be like this, but she’s a little more open to the possibility that Shelby's not half-bad than she had been two weeks ago.

Three days later, Toni has dipped into a storage shed off the side of the main building to retrieve some props for a talent show they’re due to hold the following day, and she’s got an armful of hula hoops, jump ropes, and juggling pins when the door swings open behind her and Shelby slips into the shed, goes straight to her in the time it takes Toni to offer a surprised, “Hey,” and then grasps her by the face and pulls her close to press their mouths together. The supplies go spilling from Toni’s arms so that she can grab Shelby’s hips instead, and Shelby kisses her a little aggressively, like she’s been waiting to do it again for a while now. 

There’s a wall not far behind her and Toni pushes her backward without breaking their kiss, until Shelby’s back meets it harshly, jolting them both and forcing their lips apart for a moment, and then Toni’s hands are under her shirt a little, stroking her hipbones, and Shelby’s groaning into her mouth and pulling her closer by her cheeks—and they should stop before things go too far or someone else walks in, Toni knows, but also Shelby is so unbelievably hot to her and she’s a really good kisser, too. 

She pulls back and looks at Shelby’s dark eyes, feels her thumbs stroke Toni’s cheeks and thinks about continuing this somewhere else—which is utterly unreasonable, because they have things to do today, kids to take care of, and—

“Where’s your group?” Toni asks abruptly, confused; hers are doing crafts again with Rachel while she watches both her own group and Toni’s for a few minutes, and Toni’s meant to be back soon after she’s done helping with talent show prep.

Shelby laughs at her like she hadn’t expected the question. “Look at you, all concerned for children at a time like this. Maybe you’re not so bad at this after all.”

“I’m not concerned,” Toni knee-jerks, and she really isn’t—she’s pretty sure she isn’t—but she’s curious about how Shelby’s gotten the free time to come pounce on her out of nowhere. 

“They’re with Marcus,” Shelby tells her. “We’re coming up with ideas for acts for tomorrow. He and I are gonna do a song. He plays guitar.”

“What song?”

Shelby arches an eyebrow. “You’re really _talkin’_ to me right now?”

“What’s wrong with—” Toni starts, and then takes stock of their current situation: she’s pressed up right against Shelby, trapping her against the wall, and her hands are little bit under Shelby’s shirt, still, and Shelby’s hands are also still cupping her cheeks. And embarrassment washes over her abruptly, so strongly, because she hadn’t been thinking about it at all but Shelby’s totally right; why the fuck _are_ they talking? 

Toni extricates herself immediately and Shelby seems disappointed. “I have to get back.”

She turns and starts to gather everything into her arms again, but before she goes, Shelby chimes in, still against the wall, “My momma’s favorite.”

Toni pauses. “Huh?”

“The song. It’s my momma’s favorite song.” Shelby looks a little shy, like she’s revealing something she doesn’t typically like to talk about, and Toni stares.

“Huh.” She isn’t sure what else to say, and finally settles on, “I’m sure it’ll be good. You’re…” she hesitates, and then grudgingly admits, “kind of a good singer.”

Shelby’s smile is slow to form on her lips and there’s a sudden twinkle in her eye. “I know.”

“Oh, fuck off,” Toni sighs out, and as she turns to leave the sound of Shelby’s light laughter follows her out. 

A lot of the kids participate in the talent show the next day, and Toni nearly falls asleep sitting through repeated hula-hoop acts, a few badly-acted skits, and a couple of horrid attempts at juggling, among other things. Some of the counselors participate, too, just to encourage the kids to be brave enough to volunteer. Leah does a dramatic reading from a Charles Dickens novel and Toni nearly goes into a sleep coma, Quinn drops Mentos into a Coke bottle and gets lots of oohs and ahhs from the children, and two of the other boys hold the worst “rap battle” Toni’s ever seen in her entire life. Fatin shows off the expensive clothes in her suitcase and passes it off like a talent; Toni’s pretty sure she either just wanted to brag or to get some attention. Carlos bench presses a child volunteer who giggles the whole time. 

Eventually, Toni perks up a little when Shelby and Marcus take the stage, and she knows she’s so obvious; Martha’s sitting next to her and glances at her with a little bit of a smirk, but Toni ignores her and just watches. 

“I’m gonna sing a song for y’all,” Shelby says into the mic, and it’s her only introduction before Marcus starts plucking on his guitar. 

Toni vaguely recognizes it—later that night, she’ll google it on her phone and find that it’s a Faith Hill song called “Breathe”—and it’s maybe a country song, she’s not sure, but Shelby’s twang certainly makes it sound like one. Toni can tell she’s a natural performer; Shelby’s not nervous at all and there’s a certain charisma and confidence she has onstage, no doubt honed by years of pageants, and her voice sounds lovely. It’s a love song, and Shelby’s eyes so rarely drift in Toni’s direction that she has to be avoiding her on purpose—which makes sense, Toni thinks, because God forbid she’d give Toni the wrong idea; they’ve known each other for two and a half weeks and making out is fun, and that’s all that’s going on, probably. 

Toni quashes the thought and claps when the song ends, and it’s only when Martha outright chuckles at her that she realizes it’s the first time she’s reacted to any of the acts at all. “Shut up,” she mumbles, and Martha just laughs harder.

The following night, Toni’s getting ready for bed in her cabin when a knock comes on her door, and Shelby’s there, looking almost nervous as she holds up a thick blanket in her arms. “Want to go watch the stars with me?” she asks, and Toni’s chest feels warm.

“Okay,” she says before she can think about it, and in minutes they’re laying out on the grass in the field again, side by side on the blanket, arms barely touching.

“Do you know any constellations?” Shelby asks her.

“Yeah.”

“Which ones?”

“The Big Dipper,” Toni offers, and then pauses. “The Little Dipper.”

Shelby giggles at her and Toni scowls to suppress a smile. “You could’ve just said no, Toni.”

“They count,” Toni insists quietly, and she sees Shelby’s head turn in her peripheral vision, feels Shelby’s eyes on her cheek. 

“My daddy taught me a few,” Shelby says, and there’s something like sorrow in her tone; Toni picks up on it right away. “We don’t talk anymore. Same with my mom.” She pauses. “Same with all of them.”

Toni looks at her and says, “I’m so fucking sorry, Shelby,” and Shelby kisses her hard under the stars, and it doesn’t go on for long but when it’s over Shelby’s head rests against her shoulder and Toni doesn’t complain, just watches the night sky and feels Shelby’s pinky finger brush against hers and then rest atop it. 

It’s starting to feel like it isn’t just about making out, Toni thinks.


	4. Week 4

Toni spends her fourth week trying to figure out what the fuck this thing with Shelby is.

Laying under the stars with her starts to become a nightly thing: they head out just after eleven and usually come back just after midnight, and sometimes it’s mostly silent, sometimes they talk about stupid things like their favorite foods or the TV shows they like, and sometimes they ask each other tough questions, like when Toni finally gets up the courage to confront the whole religion thing.

“Doesn’t it bother you, though? I mean, I’m not saying all religious people are homophobic, but I’ve never met a homophobic atheist, just saying.”

“I’m sure they’re out there,” Shelby says idly, and Toni can’t exactly argue it because there are seven billion people in the world, but still.

“I mean, sure, but you know what I mean.”

“You’re right,” Shelby admits, and she’s distracting Toni with the way she’s holding Toni’s hand in both of her own, fiddling with and stroking over Toni’s fingers as they lay side by side on their backs. “Believe me, I’ve seen the worst of it. But I see the good in it, too.”

“I don’t,” Toni says shortly.

“It’s like…” Shelby pauses and Toni can sense she’s searching for the right words. “I know that if I were born somewhere else I might believe in somethin’ else. But I like that it gives things meanin’, you know? It comforts me to believe that there’s a reason I’m a… well, that I’m meant to be this way.”

“You don’t really like saying it,” Toni notices. 

“I’m not perfect,” Shelby says.

Toni looks at her and tells her, “I’m a lesbian,” hoping it’ll help somehow, and Shelby squeezes her hand and then lifts it to her mouth, pressing a kiss to Toni’s palm. It’s a simple, affectionate gesture and yet it makes Toni swallow thickly and her cheeks warm.

The other counselors all know something’s happened between them, obviously, given the incident around the campfire, and at the very least Fatin, Dot, and Martha know something’s _still_ happening, even if they don’t know what, but of course none of them are cruel enough to spread it around and risk getting them let go, and Fatin especially wouldn’t have a leg to stand on, given that she has sex with Carlos one night and then brags about it to half the girls the following day. 

Shelby and Toni don’t have sex. The nights on the blanket are pretty innocent aside from some light making out, other than the one time Shelby’s hand brushes against Toni’s chest while they’re kissing and it spirals into Toni’s tongue in Shelby’s mouth and Shelby’s hand up her shirt, but it’s nothing that tops the first time in the water; Toni can still vividly remember how Shelby had felt pressed up against her without any clothes on.

She’s getting pretty sexually frustrated.

Martha finally brings it all up at lunch one day when it’s just the two of them with a simple, “Wanna talk about it?” and Toni shoots her an annoyed look.

“Not really.”

“I went to ask you something last night and you weren’t in your cabin…”

“I said I don’t want to talk about it.” Martha sighs at her and Toni adds, “Wasn’t it you who said I should bond with her? Now I shouldn’t?”

“You’ll get fired if you get caught,” Martha warns her.

“We just fucking stargaze, Marty,” Toni snaps, and it’s only half-true because they’ve done plenty to get fired for, too, and she regrets saying anything at all when Martha just raises her eyebrows like she’s surprised. 

“Like you used to with Regan?” she notices, and Toni shoots her an angry look and leaves abruptly. 

Later that night, Shelby blurts, “Have you ever been in love?” once they’re back under the stars again, and Toni sits on the question for a long moment, uncomfortable, and keeps her eyes on the sky even when she feels Shelby looking over at her again. 

Finally, she nods. “Just once. You?”

“Twice,” Shelby says. “When?”

“When have I been in love?” 

Shelby rolls onto her side and props herself up on her elbow, giving Toni her full attention. “Yeah.”

“High school.” She looks at Shelby and isn’t sure how to feel when she sees Shelby trying to suppress a smile. “What?”

“Me too. With my best friend Becca.”

Toni furrows her eyebrows, certain she’s heard that name before, some other night during one of their talks. “Is she still your best friend?” she finally realizes, and when Shelby nods Toni isn’t sure how to feel about that, either. “How does that work?”

“Platonically,” Shelby answers with a laugh. “Although, it’s kind of—” she cuts herself off, a little embarrassed, and then admits, “You’ll think this is weird.”

“Probably,” Toni agrees, and Shelby swats at her arm before she continues.

“She was the only person I told about me before I graduated high school, and I guess she was a little curious too at the time or somethin’, or she just felt bad for me or thought it was fun, I don’t know, but…” Shelby bites her lip, “there was a lot of makin’ out during sleepovers. She’s only dated guys, though.”

Toni’s eyes widen. “I’m sorry, are you telling me right now that you fell in love with your straight best friend and she was just down to make out with you occasionally? Perks of being hot, Jesus.”

“Oh, like you _aren’t_.” Shelby rolls her eyes, but she’s grinning.

“You think I’m hot?” Toni teases.

“Unbelievably,” Shelby says, unbothered, and then adds, “Now tell me about yours.”

Toni heaves a sigh because she really doesn’t want to, but it’s only fair at this point. “Her name was Regan, she was my first girlfriend, and we broke up before graduation. Then I ran into her a year ago, we tried it again, and it… just didn’t work out.” Regan had taken a job across the country and left Toni behind without a second thought, and even recalling anything about it still makes her chest ache. 

Shelby looks at the visible discomfort on Toni’s face and then tells her, “The second girl I fell in love with cheated on me.”

“Fuck,” Toni breathes out.

Shelby gives her a wry smile. “Three months ago.”

“ _Fuck_.”

“Yeah. We were together for a year and a half. Lucy.” Shelby gets an idea, suddenly, and then rolls onto her back to get access to her shorts pocket. Toni watches her dig out her cell phone, and she goes on, “She still sends me—”

“Wait, what the fuck is her number still doing in your phone?” Toni interjects, sitting up and looking at her. “Block her.”

Shelby looks a little guilty as she sighs and sits up, too. “I don’t know. Sometimes she’s nice.”

“Shelby,” Toni stares at her, her mouth hanging open, “let me see.”

Shelby opens up her texts and then offers Toni her phone, visibly embarrassed, and explains, “Becca’s been tellin’ me the same thing, but I don’t know, I don’t think I need to be spiteful, I just figured I’d have a nice summer, move on—”

Toni’s torn between trying to pay attention to Shelby and the phone, but a small pit forms in her stomach at Shelby’s explanation and she tries to push the word in her head to the back of her mind— _rebound_ —and focus on what she’s looking at instead. 

It’s a mess. Shelby doesn’t seem to ever reply to the messages this girl sends her, but the texts themselves range from drunk texts of her ex cozied up to other girls to messages that say things like “I miss you so much” and “please forgive me”, and sometimes the pendulum swings back and forth as swiftly as a day or two apart. One particularly offensive photo features Shelby’s ex mid-kiss with another girl and there’s tongue visible. 

It’s not the kind of thing Toni would’ve ever expected Shelby to put up with, given her confidence as of late, and when Toni looks back at her she wonders how much of it has been false bravado all along—she can remember the kiss in the lake, now, and how Shelby had made the first move but then Toni had been the one to escalate things. She pictures Shelby before their time at Sunny Lake, maybe a little sweet and naïve, and imagines her getting her heart broken and deciding to show up her ex by having a summer fling. And then Toni had come along.

Toni wants to be upset about it, but she does sense that Shelby’s a genuinely nice girl, and right now the photos and texts on the phone are taking up most of Toni’s headspace anyway, because they really are totally abhorrent and they’re clearly meant to fuck with Shelby and hurt her. 

“I have an idea,” she says, finally. “Want her to block you?”

“Block _me_?” Shelby asks, confused. “Why would she do that?”

Toni finds the camera app and then abruptly pushes Shelby onto her back and straddles her. The last thing she sees before she kisses Shelby is the surprised look on her face, and then Shelby’s hands are tangled in her hair and she’s fully into it, like their previous conversation has been entirely forgotten. Toni tugs on Shelby’s bottom lip with her teeth eventually, and she’s had the phone positioned properly for several seconds now: she taps at where she thinks the button to take the photo is a few times, and then breaks the kiss, sits up, and examines her handiwork. 

It’s a little off-center, but otherwise it’s come out perfectly: the image is of Shelby, eyes closed and cheeks flushed, her hands in Toni’s hair while Toni’s teeth pull at her lip. Toni turns the phone around and shows the photo to Shelby, and Shelby’s eyes widen at the sight of it.

“Oh no, I can’t—” Shelby starts, but then she pauses and thinks about it for a moment, and Toni grins at her. 

“Wanna take more?” Toni offers, and Shelby presses her lips together like she knows she shouldn’t but she’s thinking it over anyway. Toni goes to look through her texts again. “Let’s look at this last one: ‘Fine, I never loved you anyway.’ Wow, what a catch. _So_ glad you’ve been taking the high road here with your emotionally abusive psycho ex.”

Shelby yanks Toni down by her shirt collar and kisses her again, and Toni thinks she gets a couple of photos of them making out, but she doesn’t get the chance to check for several more minutes, until after they’re both breathing hard and their hips are shifting against each other a little. Shelby takes her shirt off and Toni isn’t sure if it’s out of lust or to facilitate Toni’s idea, but she takes the phone from her a moment later and Toni agrees, “You take them,” then kisses down her neck and sucks at her collarbone. Shelby breathes heavily into her ear but Toni feels her raising her arm to get a better angle of the two of them and knows she’s genuinely getting into this—both the photo idea and what they’re actually doing, apparently, because she moans a little when Toni uses her teeth. 

“Maybe lower,” Shelby breathes out, and the lines are still blurred; Toni doesn’t know how much of this is for the pictures and how much of it is driven by something else entirely, but she nods and lets Shelby get a shot of her kissing the swell of her breast, and then Toni moves uncertainly down her body, until she’s at Shelby’s ribcage, and Shelby just breathes audibly and looks down, taking a photo of that, too. Toni licks right next to her hipbone and looks up at Shelby, and Shelby bites her lip and takes another picture. 

Toni lifts her head and asks, “Good?”, because that last one is about a hundred times dirtier than anything she’d seen Shelby’s ex send, so certainly they’ve got plenty of ammo.

“We could do one more,” Shelby whispers, and when Toni kisses and licks right at the line of her shorts Shelby puts a hand on her head and doesn’t even bother to act like she’s trying to take a picture. Toni hears her moan again, and it takes everything in her to pull back and sit up. Shelby’s hand slides from her hair and falls to her side and then they just stare at each other, Shelby blinking rapidly and breathing hard. 

“Want to send them now?” Toni asks, her voice low, and Shelby just shakes her head—which isn’t surprising; Toni’s realizing as the days go on that Shelby’s definitely just kind of a sweetheart, but at least now she has them if she ever changes her mind. “You can always use them later.”

“Use them later?” Shelby echoes dumbly, and Toni sees her cheeks noticeably flushing and realizes what she’s thinking.

“To send,” she elaborates hastily, and if possible Shelby blushes harder. “If she ever bothers you again.”

“Oh. Yeah. Right.”

They make their way back to their separate cabins pretty quickly after that.

The next day, Toni has lifeguard duty right before lunch and Shelby’s nearby for the hour: there’s a man-made sandy area with a volleyball net and she’s refereeing a match between her own kids. She’s wearing a bikini again and Toni just stares and stares, enough that it’s obvious even with the sunglasses she’s wearing. 

Fatin’s kids are doing canoeing and when they finish up, Fatin passes by Toni and calls out, “Hey, I think one of your kids is in trouble out there, Toni,” and then laughs hysterically when Toni’s head whips around and she practically launches herself out of the lifeguard chair. Her kids are completely fine. 

“That’s not fucking funny,” Toni snaps when she realizes, but Fatin’s already halfway gone, still laughing. 

Shelby sends her kids off to lunch eventually, calling out proudly, “Show everyone what we learned about fish today, guys!” and her kids launch into some bastardization of “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes”, only with different fish fins, and Toni just shakes her head like she actually finds it a little endearing instead of annoying, then wonders what’s gotten into her. 

She goes to shower off the sand and lake water afterward and Shelby’s already there; Toni can hear her singing this insanely cheesy song about love Toni recognizes from her childhood: “— _makes me crinkle my nose, wherever it goes I always know_ —"

She goes on, and Toni means to pass by the entrance to her stall without incident but Shelby just has the curtain wide open, and she’s showering sand off in her bikini and washing shampoo out of her hair when Toni looks at her. Shelby notices her right away and stops singing, like she’s embarrassed to have been caught for once, but then she asks, “Is anyone else comin’?”

“I don’t think so,” Toni says. “Why?”

Shelby reaches out to grab her arm, then pulls her into the stall and closes the curtain behind her, and suddenly Toni’s got a face full of warm water and Shelby’s giggling at her a little. Toni pulls out of the stream and wipes at her eyes, then runs her hands through her hair and just looks at Shelby, who isn’t shy at all about admiring Toni’s body right back: Toni’s got a two-piece swimsuit on with a top fashioned like a sports bra and so she’s got about as much on as Shelby does, and she’s actually a little bit nervous about it after last night, after Shelby’s fingers in her hair, pushing down on her head a little with Toni’s mouth at her hips. 

But Shelby just pops open a bottle of shampoo, reaches out and dumps a glob onto Toni’s head, and then starts lathering, and Toni closes her eyes and lets her; her nails feel incredibly good against Toni’s scalp. 

“How’s your day been so far?” Shelby asks, like they’re an old married couple catching up after work, and Toni almost wants to laugh.

“Distracting,” is the first word that comes to her mind.

“I taught my kids about fish fins,” Shelby says, as though Toni hasn’t just practically confessed to lusting after her all day and they aren’t in the middle of showering together with next-to-no clothes on. “Dorsal, pectoral, pelvic, caudal—”

“You are such a fucking dork,” Toni laughs out as she washes the last of the shampoo away, and as soon as she’s done Shelby grasps her hips and presses her against the wall, then leans in and sucks at her neck. Toni’s caught off-guard by the sudden change in mood, and her breath catches. 

“—so much I wanna do—” she hears Shelby mumble, and when her hand slides across Toni’s abdomen Toni knows right away that she’s just down to let Shelby do whatever she wants to her; maybe she always has been and Shelby just hasn’t pushed it this far yet. They haven’t talked about what’s going to happen after their six weeks are up, or even if there are actual feelings here beyond lust and a need to fill a void left by loneliness and heartbreak, and Toni thinks that they probably _should_ talk, but Shelby also seems like the type of girl who’d put an end to it if she wasn’t catching feelings and found out Toni kind of _was_.

She’d look at Toni sadly, maybe, say something like, “I don’t want you to get hurt, so I think we should stop,” and Toni would slink off feeling pathetic and then have to exist around her for the next two weeks. 

Maybe they shouldn’t talk about it. Maybe she should just tell Shelby to hurry up and slide her hand into her swimsuit bottoms already.

She goes with that idea, murmurs, “So do it,” and kisses Shelby back eagerly when Shelby’s mouth moves to her lips. Shelby’s hands return to her hips and her fingers slip into Toni’s swimsuit and start to tug it a few inches down her thighs, and Toni holds her face close by her cheek and neck and breathes a little unevenly into her mouth between kisses. 

Loud voices echo from the hall leading into the shower room and Shelby pulls away immediately and rushes to turn the water off while Toni scrambles to tug her bottoms back up, and then they both breathe hard and just look at each other as several girls enter the shower room, mid-conversation. Toni recognizes Fatin’s, Dot’s, and Rachel’s voices right away. 

“Something’s still going on?” Rachel asks. “Really?”

“Are you blind? Of course it is,” Fatin says, and Toni almost has a heart attack when for a moment it looks like Fatin might pull back the curtain and step into their shower stall, but instead she settles into the one right next to them. “I think maybe they’ve already had sex.”

“No way,” Dot chimes in, and Toni feels her cheeks getting hot as she realizes what they’re talking about. Across from her, Shelby looks uncomfortable. “Too much sexual tension for that. Have you seen Toni staring at her? It’s practically all she does.”

Toni averts her gaze to her feet, mortified. 

“I mean, I’m rooting for them because God knows we could use something interesting happening around here, but you’re probably right,” Fatin admits. “One of Toni’s kids could’ve died today and she literally wouldn’t have even noticed because Shelby was in a bikini.”

Rachel laughs and Toni hears her shower come on. Fatin’s does, too, and Toni squeezes her eyes shut and prays for Dot to hurry up. 

“Shelby likes her back, though?” Rachel asks. 

“I think she’s still hung up on her ex; she’s brought her up a few times now,” Dot says.

“Could be just taking what she can get,” Fatin suggests offhandedly. “I mean, Toni’s hot. I wouldn’t be complaining, either.”

Dot’s shower comes on and that’s Toni’s cue to slip out of the stall as hastily as she can without giving herself away; she feels movement from Shelby and then fingers on her hand, like Shelby’s trying to stop her, but Toni moves too quickly for her and then rushes from the bathroom, all the way back to her cabin. She locks the door once she’s inside, dripping water everywhere, and then wraps herself up in a towel and sits on her bed, a little surprised to find herself blinking back tears. 

She thinks of the nights she and Shelby have spent spilling their guts to each other about everything and anything, and then she thinks about Regan upping and leaving her so quickly and willingly, how much it had completely crushed her at the time, and of how this thing with Shelby is already starting to make her feel enough to get hurt by stupid gossip just a few short weeks in. It scares her. 

So when Shelby comes along and knocks on her door ten minutes later, all dried off now and with her hair pinned up and her eyebrows furrowed with concern, Toni blurts, “Hey, you know this isn’t serious or anything, right?”

Shelby blinks at her, a little wide-eyed, and then stammers out, “I—no. Right. Yes.” Then she blushes. “I mean, I knew that.”

“Okay,” Toni says, and ignores the way her heart plummets a little. “Just making sure.”

Shelby forces a laugh but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “Did you think that it was?”

“No,” Toni blurts, defensive. “I just didn’t want you to think that.”

“Well, I don’t.”

“Me either.”

“Good,” Shelby says sharply. “Then I’m glad we’ve cleared that up.” 

She turns and leaves, and Toni watches her go with a pit in her stomach.


	5. Week 5

The first night of the fifth week—one day after Toni and Shelby agree that their thing is just a fun summer fling—is the first night in a while that Shelby doesn’t show up at Toni’s cabin asking to lay out under the stars together.

Toni tosses and turns and thinks back on the day. Shelby had been distant, had given her a wider berth than usual as they’d exchanged the second session’s campers for a new group over the course of the afternoon, and Toni recognizes that maybe they’d crossed a line before, had told each other a little too much given what they’re calling it all now, and so maybe pulling back a little today had been the right thing to do to maintain a little distance.

Toni really wants to be lying next to Shelby right now, though. 

She checks the clock and sees it’s just after midnight; they’d be wrapping up by now even if they _had_ elected to lay out on the blanket in the first place. Toni squeezes her eyes shut and thinks about trying again tomorrow night instead if Shelby’s a no-show again.

She hardly gets any sleep and Martha looks openly worried for her as she scarfs down breakfast the next day. Fatin passes by, gives her an unpleasant once-over, and then says, “You look like shit,” before she moves on. Toni raises a middle finger at her back. 

“Is everything alright?” Martha asks.

“Perfect.” Toni stabs at her eggs with her fork and Martha flinches. “This is exactly how I wanted to spend my summer. Corralling children, getting six hours of sleep a night, being a rebound for a girl who loves Jesus. It’s heaven.”

“I don’t think you’re a rebound,” Martha says. “At least not intentionally. Shelby’s too sweet for that.”

“It’s casual,” Toni replies, trying her best not to sound bitter. “She said so.”

Martha raises her eyebrows. “That doesn’t sound like Shelby.”

“Because you know her so well.”

“Actually, we talk a lot. Have you told her how you feel?”

“Nothing to tell.” Toni shovels more food into her mouth to distract herself from the conversation, but Martha just shoots her a knowing look and of course refuses to let it go.

“Toni. You’re not actually trying to lie to _me_ about this, are you? You always have feelings. Most of the time the issue is that you have too many of them. Usually negative ones.”

“She blew me off last night,” Toni says, just to redirect the conversation, and Martha goes with it, mercifully.

“Did you say something that upset her?”

“No, we just agreed it was casual and she’s stayed away from me since. Because… I don’t know, I guess we were getting too close before. It makes sense; it just sucks.” She pauses, flushing a little. “I mean, it sucks because it’s been good with her. Like, she’s a good kisser.”

Martha blinks slowly at her, and then finally says, “You know, maybe it’ll do you some good if I let you solve this one on your own, Toni.” She takes the last bite of her food and then picks up her tray and leaves, and Toni stares after, confused.

She gets paired up with Shelby for the hiking trail this time, and Shelby focuses entirely on their two groups of kids; they’ve both done this enough times now that they know the path like the backs of their own hands, and Shelby serves as a tour guide as they walk. Toni brings up the rear to help keep track of the children, keeping her distance from Shelby. 

“And if y’all look over here, you can see some fish in this stream. Those are brown trout; see the little white tips on the fins?”

The children ooh and ahh as they crouch by the water and Toni does a quick head count and then wipes sweat from her brow, trying not to look completely miserable. Shelby’s head turns and she catches Toni’s eye briefly and then swiftly averts her gaze like she hadn’t expected Toni to be looking back at her. 

They move on, and Toni just kills time watching Shelby trudge ahead until this little eight-year-old named Kevin rolls his ankle on a rock and Toni has to give him a piggyback ride for the rest of the hike. 

“I wish I was in Shelby’s group,” he says into Toni’s ear with a sigh of admiration, staring over Toni’s shoulder at Shelby, and she lets him slip through her fingers just enough to get a terrified gasp from him. 

“What was that?”

“You’re cool too,” he blurts, and Toni rolls her eyes. 

Another two days go by and Toni doesn’t hear from Shelby at all. She thinks this can’t possibly go on forever, until they part ways in a week and a half—the plan can’t _possibly_ have gone so quickly from “keep things casual” to “end it altogether”, or at least Toni certainly hopes that isn’t what’s been going on, because if it is then she’s completely lost at this point—so on the third night she doesn’t strip down and commit to sleep just yet, opting for pajama shorts and a tank top instead. Then she lays in bed and waits, wide awake.

Eleven o’clock passes and Shelby doesn’t show up. Then eleven thirty passes, and Toni can’t take it anymore; she’s frustrated and confused and a little angry, too, and so she slips out of her cabin and marches over to Shelby’s, and almost doesn’t even knock on the door, but she resists the urge to barge in and taps quickly on the wood instead, huffing loudly.

Shelby takes a moment—presumably has to get out of bed herself and then come open the door—and when she cracks it open and looks outside, she seems unsurprised to see that it’s Toni, but there’s audible confusion in her voice when she asks, “Hello?”

“What are you doing?” Toni asks sharply, and Shelby just stares at her.

“…Sleeping?”

“Instead of…?” Toni asks leadingly, annoyed that Shelby’s playing dumb, and Shelby sighs.

“I thought we weren’t doin’ that anymore.”

“So the plan is to do nothing instead? It’s just over?” Toni presses, and Shelby looks like she thinks maybe Toni has a point; they’ve got less than two weeks left of this, apparently, and they’ve just wasted several days of it.

“No, I just…” Shelby starts, and then says, “wasn’t sure what you wanted.”

“We can still spend time together,” Toni insists. “It’s just…now we know what this is. What we should do. Boundaries. All… all of that stuff.” She knows she sounds stupid, like she has no clue what she’s doing or what she’s talking about, and that’s because she really doesn’t. What she wants to say is that they should leave their emotions at the door from now on, because she doesn’t want to get hurt, but saying that means confessing that she’s been having feelings, and if Shelby doesn’t have those same feelings then that’s a very bad idea. 

“You have any suggestions about what we should do, then?” Shelby asks, and there’s this odd edge to her tone, suddenly, and she’s pulled the door to her cabin open just a little bit wider. Toni licks her lips and then glances over her own shoulder, at the silent campground around them. She’s never been inside of Shelby’s cabin before, especially not at night when it’s forbidden, but Shelby’s looking at her kind of darkly all of a sudden and Toni finds herself letting out a shaky breath.

“Uh,” is all that comes out of her mouth for a moment, and then she asks, “Do you?”

“Talking’s off the table,” Shelby says, and then her gaze drops blatantly and settles on Toni’s mouth. “Right?”

“Right,” Toni breathes out, and then she pushes Shelby backward and slips inside, and her hands are in Shelby’s hair and they’re kissing hard and fast before Toni can think about it anymore. The door swings shut on its own behind them and Shelby grabs Toni’s hips and pushes until Toni’s back slams into the door, and then Shelby’s tongue is in her mouth and her hands are sliding up under Toni’s shirt, quickly enough that it makes Toni’s head spin but with just enough of a pause to give Toni a chance to stop it. Shelby’s hands are cool against her hot, sun-tanned skin and Toni groans into Shelby’s mouth when Shelby touches her bare breasts for the first time.

Toni’s never had meaningless sex before and she knows from her nights of talking to Shelby that Shelby hasn’t either, but when Shelby breaks their kiss to tug Toni’s tank top off she doesn’t seem shy about it, and Toni doesn’t even remotely consider saying no to her. Toni kisses her again immediately and Shelby seems resistant to it, mumbles, “I want to look,” into her mouth, and Toni groans from both the frustration and the arousal it stirs in her.

“You’ve seen them,” she pants, kissing Shelby’s neck instead when her lips won’t cooperate, and Toni’s hips jump when Shelby’s thumb runs over her nipple.

“Not like this.”

They only have the moonlight to work with; the lights in Shelby’s cabin are all off, but it’s enough that Shelby can see her body and enough that Toni can maneuver them to the bed and tug Shelby’s shirt off along the way. She’s seen Shelby topless before, too, but not from the front, and this time it’s Shelby trying to kiss while Toni distractedly looks down between their bodies. 

“You’re so hot,” Toni breathes out; she wants to say beautiful but it feels too heavy, and Shelby moans and turns them around, pushing Toni down onto the bed and then straddling her immediately; it’s all very quick and Toni can barely keep up with the way Shelby dips her head and kisses her breast, then licks and sucks at her nipple.

Toni decides she _loves_ casual, actually.

She’s squirming and breathing hard by the time Shelby kisses back up to her lips, and then it almost feels frantic; Shelby grasps at her cheeks and Toni’s hands settle at her hips and then they’re kissing hard and fast again and Shelby’s hips are rocking against Toni’s thigh, guided by Toni’s hands, and there’s no chance they’re stopping at this point, Toni knows, so she just kisses Shelby deeper and swallows Shelby’s little whimpers and moans, encourages her instead with a whispered, “You feel so good,” and Shelby really does; she’s wearing thin shorts just like Toni and Toni can feel everything against her thigh already. 

“You want me to—?” Shelby whispers, her breath hitching a little, and it’s the first time either of them has sounded even a little nervous, has shown even a small sign of hesitation, and heat shoots through Toni when she realizes that Shelby has actually been holding back. 

She nods emphatically and kisses Shelby again. “Yes, definitely,” she says, and Shelby shifts immediately, puts a hand on Toni’s shoulder and presses another into the mattress beside Toni’s head, and then her hips are rolling hard and she’s really trying to get herself there, and Toni can tell from the way Shelby’s breathing immediately gets so much harsher that it’s going to happen and it’s going to happen quickly. Toni firms up her thigh right away and adds just a little bit of pressure, then tries her best to keep kissing Shelby while Shelby grinds on her.

“I can,” Shelby pants, like she’s still warning her, like she’s still looking for permission even though Toni isn’t sure how much clearer she can be, and Toni presses harder with her thigh and earns another moan against her lips, and then Shelby’s harsh breathing is uneven, too, like she’s distracted, like she’s losing control of herself a little.

Toni kisses her jaw, tucks her face into Shelby’s neck and then reassures her, her voice a husky murmur, “I want you to, Shelby.”

Shelby’s lips brush her ear and then Toni can hear _everything_ , every hitched breath, every moan that bubbles up and even a few of the whimpers and groans that die in Shelby’s throat, and Toni’s so on edge herself; Shelby’s thigh is giving her just a taste of stimulation every now and then but her focus is on Shelby, on making her feel good, and it isn’t much longer before Shelby’s fingers are curling around her shoulder, nails biting into Toni’s skin and stinging slightly, and she’s whispering shortly, “Almost,” and Toni’s moaning a little herself at how low and thick Shelby’s voice sounds. 

Shelby’s hips rock into her one last time and then she’s stiffening and shuddering, crying out and trembling and falling apart, and Toni slides a hand up to her back and holds her close, waiting for Shelby’s body to calm down and for her breathing to even out. Toni’s chest feels so warm and light and she feels so content, suddenly, with Shelby lying on top of her and Toni’s mouth against Shelby’s neck. She kisses her there a few times, gently, while Shelby comes down, and then Shelby pulls back and turns her head and then Toni’s kissing Shelby’s lips instead, too slowly to feel anything like the lust-fueled making out they’d begun with just a few short minutes ago.

“That was so fast,” Shelby sort of half-giggles into her mouth, like she’s embarrassed, and when she pulls back Toni can see the blush blooming in Shelby’s cheeks even in the darkness. 

“Want to do it again?” Toni asks, hopeful, and Shelby makes an odd noise in her throat, like she hadn’t been expecting that, and then they’re kissing hard again. 

Toni gives the briefest thought as to whether or not they can say they’ve had sex now, if topless dry-humping even counts, but it winds up not mattering because what happens next certainly _does_ count. 

Shelby kisses her for another minute or so and then abruptly breaks it to move down her body, hands sliding to Toni’s hips and fingers dipping into her shorts, and Toni raises her hips instinctively, because yeah, Shelby taking her clothes off definitely sounds like a good idea in her foggy state of arousal, and maybe she misreads the situation, maybe has misread Shelby in general, or maybe just isn’t thinking at all, because the three seconds of warning or so she has before Shelby’s mouth is between her thighs isn’t sufficient at _all_ , and suddenly there’s a tongue licking into her and Toni lets out a strangled cry, blinks up at the ceiling with wide eyes and blurts, “ _Oh_. Fuck, _okay_ ,” and fumbles for something to grip, finds two fistfuls of sheets and rolls her hips with her mouth open wide. “Oh,” she says again, but this time it’s breathy, and her head tips back into the pillow and she squeezes her eyes shut, focusing on rolling her hips into Shelby in rhythm with her tongue. 

It feels so incredibly good and she hadn’t been prepared for it at all, still can’t quite believe it’s happening even as she pants and moans and feels tension already building in her abdomen. “Wait, stop stop stop,” she blurts, panicking because she’s being worked up way too quickly and it’s both embarrassing and inconvenient—of course she wants it to last—and Shelby jerks away from her like Toni has burned her, eyes wide and anxious when she sits up on her calves and Toni finally gets a good look at her.

“I’m so sorry, I thought—” Shelby rushes to say at the same time that Toni realizes what’s happening and backtracks, “Oh, no, I didn’t mean—” and then they both pause and just stare at each other, Shelby mortified and Toni wide-eyed and midway through trying to reassure her, and Toni deflates and can’t help but laugh shortly.

“Fuck, _I’m_ sorry; I was just about to come too fast,” she explains, and Shelby blinks at her and then lets out a puff of air, in disbelief, but relaxes a little. 

“Jesus Christ, Toni.”

“It’s really good,” Toni elaborates unnecessarily, and when Shelby reaches up and wipes at her own mouth Toni feels her heart drop, worries that she’s fucked it all up and Shelby’s done for the night. “Shit. I’m sorry.”

“You almost gave me a heart attack,” Shelby mumbles, running a hand through her hair, and Toni sits up and reaches out for her, her mind racing for what to say to make it up to her.

She kisses Shelby slowly, tastes herself a little, and then offers, “Want to take your shorts off?” and she feels Shelby relax even further against her lips and then shake her head. “I’m seriously _so_ willing—” Toni starts, and Shelby cuts her off with another slow kiss.

“I know. I wanna do this.” Shelby pulls back and there’s a bit of a twinkle in her eye as she adds, “If you think you can handle it this time.”

“Depends on how you define handling it,” Toni breathes out, playing along, and then leans back on her elbows and watches Shelby, waiting with her heart pounding hard in her chest. 

“We can always keep going after the first one, you know,” Shelby says like it’s obvious, and then she settles in between Toni’s legs again and Toni can already feel her own breathing getting more labored. 

“I didn’t think you’d want that,” she manages to say.

“That’s the most wrong you’ve _ever_ been about me,” Shelby replies, burying a laugh into her thigh, and then her tongue is slow and gentle between Toni’s legs and Toni’s lowering herself down into the pillows again, and this time she’s a lot less embarrassed about how quickly it builds and how loud and desperate her moans get. 

After she comes for the first time, Shelby kisses her trembling thighs for a few seconds, and then moves back in close and licks gently at her until Toni’s hips start rolling into her again. 

After the second time, Shelby hums happily against her, mumbles, “Maybe one more,” and then when Toni’s ready to go again, Shelby works two fingers inside of her and the third time happens even faster than the first had. 

After the third time, “one more” gets thrown out the window pretty quickly when Shelby just watches Toni tremble and pant as she tries to recover, and then curls her fingers and leans back in anyway.

After the fourth time, Toni breathes out, “I don’t know if I can again,” and Shelby shows her she’s very wrong about that.

After the fifth time, Shelby’s tongue and fingers are so slow, too slow, and Toni whimpers and strains toward her impatiently, her whole body taut, and Shelby murmurs, “I’ll get you there,” in this confident, soothing tone that Toni’s never heard from her before and will never ever forget. 

After the sixth time, Toni gives up and loses count. 

She spends the next day in a daze—nearly gets decked in the head with a frisbee during a game against Marcus’s group because she’s just busy reliving last night—and by the time they’re all eating dessert after dinner, Martha’s looking back and forth from where Toni’s staring across the cafeteria, an ice cream cone melting in her hand, to where Shelby’s carefully licking sherbet off a spoon, her eyes on Toni’s all the while. 

“You two are _seriously_ gonna get fired,” she warns, and Toni blinks out of her stupor and forces her gaze to Martha.

“Fired? For what?” she asks dumbly, not having been paying attention at all, and Fatin appears as though magically summoned by sex talk, plopping down into the seat beside Toni’s.

“Fucking Shelby,” she declares, evidently having overheard everything.

“I haven’t,” Toni blurts instinctively, and it’s _technically_ true, in a way. Her eyes slide back to Shelby despite her best efforts and Shelby’s turned around now, making small talk with one of their kinder supervisors, Linh. 

“I got paired with Shelby for Capture the Flag and we hung out for like, two hours today,” Fatin informs them both. “I know ‘just got laid’ vibes when I see them. I’m like a sex bloodhound.” She looks at Toni. “How many times did you come last night? Lesbians just go forever, right? I’m so jealous.”

“None of your business,” Toni blurts, and then her cheeks flush dark red. “I mean, we didn’t. We didn’t do that.” Martha gapes at her and Fatin just starts laughing. Toni puts her head in her hands and sighs, and God, she knows it’s oversharing but she’s been wanting to say something to _someone_ , because it was all just so good and so unexpected, so she mumbles, “Fuck, I lost _count_ , I don’t even know—” and Fatin laughs harder. “Don’t tell anyone!” Toni insists, mostly to Fatin, and when Fatin finally calms down a little she just pats Toni on the back and shakes her head. 

“Only Dot,” she promises, and Toni glares at her. “She won’t say anything!”

Fatin gets up and leaves before Toni can protest, and then she’s just left alone with Martha, who gives her a judgmental look. “You shouldn’t have said that. She’s probably gonna tell all the girls.” 

Toni groans. “I know. Fuck.”

“You two are running out of time,” Martha goes on. “You should say something.”

“About what?”

“Being into her,” Martha says, rolling her eyes like she’s frustrated she has to elaborate.

“That’s not—” Toni stutters out, floundering for a response, “I mean, we’re fine. It’s good like it is. She thinks I’m hot and I think she’s hot.” She shrugs her shoulders and Martha just blinks at her.

“You’re _actually_ gonna screw this up, aren’t you?”

“It’s fine,” Toni says shortly.

“She’s not Regan.”

“Yeah, obviously.”

Martha groans. “Toni. Please don’t make me spell this out.”

Toni grimaces at the ice cream dribbling all over her hand and onto the floor and looks around for a napkin to wipe it off, distracted. “I legitimately don’t understand what you’re trying to say, so—”

“Who suggested taking things down a notch, you or Shelby?” Martha asks abruptly, and Toni thinks back. One of the supervisors comes by with a trash bag, mercifully, and Toni dumps her cone and then shakes her hand out gingerly.

“I don’t know. Me?”

“It was definitely you.”

“Did she tell you that?” Toni asks, skeptical, and Martha shakes her head.

“No, I just know you. You did this when Regan broke up with you in high school and you’re doing it again. Bailing out of something before it gets serious, before you get hurt again or fall in love.”

“Love? We’re at a fucking summer camp,” Toni snaps, glaring at her. “She’s pretty. It’s stupid fun.”

“Fine,” Martha declares, shrugging her shoulders, and then she stands up to leave. “I tried.”

Toni watches her go with a lump in her throat, then shifts her attention back to her hand, frustrated that it’s sticky and covered in chocolate. She glances across the cafeteria and Shelby is crouching and nodding kindly at Kevin, who’s rambling excitedly about something to her. Toni curses quietly to herself at the warmth that blossoms in her chest at the sight, the same kind she’d felt last night, and then stands up and storms away.

She passes out early that night, both physically and emotionally exhausted, and the next day—the last day of the week—she ignores the knowing looks she gets from the other girls and focuses on the early afternoon scavenger hunt she’s stuck doing with Leah—who, mercifully, doesn’t say a thing to her, just buries her head in a book and lets her kids run amok while Toni tries to keep up with everyone.

As a result, it takes Toni a good hour to realize that Kevin hasn’t even attempted the scavenger hunt and is instead scouring the field nearby for dandelions and picking every single one he can find.

“Hey!” she calls out, going to him before he strays too far and collecting him by the arm. He’s got at least seven or eight now and as she steers him back toward Leah and the others, she asks, “What are you doing?”

“Getting flowers for Shelby,” he says, glancing over his shoulder at where Shelby’s at the lake in the distance, on lifeguard duty, and Toni follows his gaze and then mulls it over.

“Alright, dude,” she sighs out at last, “I’ll let you shoot your shot before your flowers die, but I gotta warn you, I don’t think you’re her type.”

She checks with Leah that she can handle things on her own for five minutes—Leah goes “mhmm” and doesn’t even look up from her book, but whatever—and then Toni and Kevin head over to the lake and it doesn’t take Shelby long to notice them approaching. 

“We come bearing gifts,” Toni declares, pushing Kevin forward half-heartedly with a hand on his back, and Kevin extends his arms proudly, dandelions in both hands, once Shelby’s disembarked from the lifeguard chair and is standing right in front of them.

“Aw, that’s so sweet,” Shelby says, beaming at him as she accepts them. “I love them.”

“I love you,” Kevin blurts, and then sprints away, back in Leah’s direction, and Toni watches him go with raised eyebrows. 

“A future Casanova, clearly,” she says to Shelby once he’s gone, and Shelby slips her sunglasses up onto her head so that Toni can see her eyes when she smiles. It’s awkward for just a moment as the silence stretches between them, and then Toni starts, “I passed out right away last night—” in case Shelby was expecting her again, and Shelby just laughs and shakes her head.

“Me too. I’m sure you were tired.”

“So tired,” Toni agrees, willing heat not to rise to her cheeks, and Shelby bites back another smile. “How are you so good with kids?” she asks, eager to change the subject.

“I love them. I’m in school at ASU to become a teacher. Middle school, though.”

“ASU?” Toni echoes, blinking dumbly at her. “I don’t—I’ve never seen you.”

Shelby gives a start, looking caught off-guard when she realizes what Toni’s implying, and then she says, “Well, I just transferred last year.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.” Shelby sounds a little breathless, and they just stare at each other for a long moment until one of the kids in the water gives a sudden screech and Shelby’s head turns sharply, but they’re only playing, nothing’s wrong, and Toni and Shelby are both silent again and neither of them seems to know what to say.

“I should—” Toni finally says, pointing a thumb over her shoulder, and Shelby nods overeagerly.

“Yeah. Okay.”

“Should… tonight, should I…?”

“If you want.”

Toni glances down at Shelby’s body and stutters, “Well, it’s not like I—I wouldn’t say—You’re you, so.” She swallows hard and takes a step back; catches her foot on a root and then stumbles a little. “I’ll just go now.”

“I’m me?” she hears Shelby call out as she’s turning around, like she doesn’t know whether to be confused or to start laughing, and Toni waves her away without looking at her and shakes her head at herself as she stalks off.

“Fucking loser,” she mumbles, grimacing, and Shelby finally seems to make a decision: Toni can hear her lilting, giggly laugh even as Toni rushes away almost as quickly as Kevin had. 

That night, Toni sneaks over to Shelby’s cabin again and touches her for the first time, watches her eyes go wide and feels her clench around Toni’s fingers while her nails scratch down Toni’s back, and Toni tucks her face into Shelby’s neck when it’s over and doesn’t say what she wants to say, says instead, “I like this so much. Doing this with you.”

Shelby cups one of Toni’s cheeks with her hand and turns to press a kiss to the other, and Toni can still feel the aftershocks making Shelby’s body tremble when Shelby’s lips brush her ear and Shelby says it for her. 

“I like _you_ so much.”


	6. Week 6

Toni thinks that going to Martha for advice is probably off the table at this point, and unfortunately right now is when she needs it most.

There had been a moment, right after Shelby’d kissed her cheek and said those words—a stretch of silence where Toni had raced to process it and took just a second too long, just long enough that Shelby had moved to prevent awkwardness from seeping into the moment, had rolled them over and slid her hand down Toni’s body and pressed inside of her, and then it had passed and Toni was moaning into Shelby’s mouth instead of thinking. 

Toni had wanted to say, “I like you too,” and it really should’ve been that easy, that simple, but she’d frozen, and every doubt and insecurity she’s ever had has risen to the surface overnight, seemingly, and now she’s left wondering if she could’ve misread something, or if Shelby had just blurted it out in bed and might regret it now. The first time Toni had ever said “I love you” she’d been in high school and Regan’s head had been in between her thighs and it had been _so_ incredibly embarrassing; they’d only been dating for a couple of months and Toni’d had to take it back immediately—Regan had been a good sport about it but then had never let her live it down.

Toni knows that “like” is different from “love”, but Shelby’s only known her for about a month and she’d sounded so serious, there’d been so much emotion in her voice, and Toni isn’t _that_ up her own ass about her skills in the bedroom but it’s certainly possible that Shelby wouldn’t have said it if they’d just been walking out by the lake together or something.

They should definitely talk about it, but Toni isn’t all that great at that. What Toni _is_ great at is running away from her problems and leaving the ball in someone else’s court.

So she keeps her distance for the day, makes a little awkward eye contact with Shelby from across the cafeteria during mealtimes to try to hint to her that she’s down to talk if Shelby is, but she doesn’t try to sit with Shelby or to speak to her directly, doesn’t come to Shelby’s cabin on the first night of their final week, and waits for Shelby to make the first move.

“I thought the sex was good,” Fatin says on the second day of the week, while she and Toni are on the sidelines refereeing a dodgeball game, and Toni shoots her a confused look. “You guys are frosty. Have you even looked at her today?”

“Why should I tell you anything after last time?” Toni asks, and Fatin just smirks at her.

“Because Martha’s tapped out, so I’m all you’ve got.”

Toni huffs; Fatin’s kind of right. “It’s not like she couldn’t come talk to me if she wanted to.”

“Are you, like, not used to making the first move?” Fatin asks her abruptly, arching an eyebrow. “Because I just assumed—”

“I have,” Toni interjects, defensive, and Fatin blinks at her for a moment and then laughs.

“Oh, you _so_ aren’t, are you? Do I need to teach you how to put yourself out there? Or maybe you can get some advice from that little kid I heard brought her flowers—”

“Fuck off,” Toni bites out.

“Swear jar!” one of Fatin’s kids calls out as he rushes past them to retrieve a wayward dodgeball.

“Your parents sent you here because you annoy them,” Toni bites back at him, and he frowns at her and then gets pelted by one of Toni’s kids while he’s distracted. It’s Kevin, and Toni says, “Nice!” and gives him a thumbs up.

Fatin goes on like none of that’s just happened. “Maybe she’s confused, too.”

“That’s what I’m worried about,” Toni admits, momentarily letting herself be just a little bit vulnerable. “What if she is and I screw it up and say the wrong thing?”

“I meant that maybe _you’re_ confusing her, idiot, not that she’s confused about her feelings. Jesus, Toni, just ask her out. _How_ many hours did this girl spend between your legs the other night? Are you a fucking moron?”

“You should know more than anyone that you don’t have to have feelings to have sex.”

“Yeah, and Shelby looks like she’s straight out of the Disney Channel half the time, Toni; she’s not me. God, no wonder Martha’s pissed at you. You’re so useless. Poor Shelby’s going to die waiting for you to make a move.”

Fatin’s words swirl around in Toni’s head for the rest of the afternoon, and she spends the next few hours trying out sentences in her head, trying to figure out how to approach Shelby and ask her about her feelings without having to confess her own beforehand. When dinner rolls around, Toni enters the dining hall and tries to be just a little brave: Shelby’s eating alone and instead of choosing a different table like she has been, she walks over and sits down across from Shelby, offering her a small smile.

She doesn’t get the reaction she expected; Shelby stiffens noticeably and just sort of blinks at her like she’s waiting for Toni to announce something monumental, and Toni feels her face reddening the longer the silence stretches between them. Shelby’s got some sort of meatloaf on her tray that frankly looks disgusting, and Toni gestures to it, forces herself to ask, “Is that any good?” just to say something. 

Shelby’s lips part and she just looks at Toni with disbelief for a moment, then abruptly gets up and leaves, not even bothering to take her tray with her. Toni stares after her, stunned, until Shelby’s exited the dining hall entirely. 

“Up,” she hears a voice say promptly from behind her, and when she looks, Fatin’s there, gripping her by her shoulders. Martha’s sitting in the distance behind Fatin, shaking her lowered head in disappointment with her hand pressed to her forehead. 

“What—?” Toni starts, alarmed when Fatin starts tugging at her until she’s forced to scramble to her feet to avoid being dragged to the ground.

Fatin twists her toward the exit and then pushes her forward. “Go. Apologize to her for being an ass and then tell her you like her. You’re welcome. Send me an invitation to the wedding.”

“I don’t—“ Toni tries again, and Fatin shoves her again, harder, so that Toni stumbles a little and then glares back at her. “Stop that.”

“If you don’t walk out that door right now and go find her, I’m telling Gretchen,” Fatin threatens, and a slight shudder runs down Toni’s spine at the thought of their camp director. 

“Carlos,” she reminds Fatin anyway, and Fatin just shrugs.

“So we’ll all get fired. I have his number. Do you have Shelby’s?”

Toni huffs and leaves the dining hall. 

She can’t find Shelby. She’s not in her cabin, she’s not out by the lake or at their stargazing spot, she’s not by the campfire, she’s not in _Toni’s_ cabin, and not in the storage shed or the rec room or in any of the other buildings Toni checks. Toni wanders the camp for nearly half an hour with a pit in her stomach the entire time, a little terrified that she’s really fucked things up for good now. Maybe Shelby’s off with Gretchen, she considers with horror, handing in her resignation just so that she doesn’t have to be around Toni anymore.

Then Toni checks the counselors’ showers. Everyone’s still at dinner, so she knows only one person can be in the stall with the water running—plus Toni hears a sniffle when she settles against the inside wall of the bathroom, right by the entrance. Her heart falls a little. 

“…Shelby?” she tries tentatively, and she hears another sniff and then what sounds like a sharp inhale; she pictures Shelby gathering herself in the stall and trying to sound composed, and when Shelby speaks Toni can hear the quiver in her voice she’s very obviously trying to hide.

“Did you want something?”

She doesn’t quite sound angry, but Toni can tell that she is, anyway. She takes a deep breath. “Can we talk?”

“That’s against the rules,” Shelby tells her sharply, and Toni sighs, feeling lower than dirt.

“I didn’t… you said that, before. Not me,” she points out, and then grimaces at herself because it honestly doesn’t really matter. “I want to talk. I know I’m screwing this up. I just—” She exhales again and rests her head against the wall, biting her lip and staring up toward the ceiling. “Can you tell me why you’re upset?”

Shelby lets out an audible, mirthless laugh, like she can’t believe what she’s hearing, and Toni squeezes her eyes shut and clenches her jaw, silently cursing herself, because it’s immediately apparent that _that_ was wrong, too. “We spent all that time gettin’ to know each other,” Shelby starts slowly, and Toni can hear the frustration in her voice right away. “I told you about my family and about bein’ in love and gettin’ hurt…” 

Toni opens her mouth abruptly, wants to interject with something reassuring, anything, but Shelby keeps going and the words die in her throat.

“And then out of nowhere you practically said you didn’t want to hear any of it anymore, that it didn’t mean anythin’. So I stayed away.” 

Toni finds words this time, but they’re not exactly great ones: “That wasn’t what—I didn’t mean—"

“And then you were upset about _that_ , too, so I slept with you because it was obvious we’d both been wantin’ to, and afterward you were actin’ like a teenager with a crush around me—”

 _Because I like you so much, probably more than you like me_ , Toni thinks and doesn’t say, because Shelby’s not done.

“—so I told you I liked you—I thought that I was tellin’ you I liked you _back_ —and you didn’t say anythin’ and then avoided me for two days. Why do you _think_ I’m upset right now?”

“I’m an ass,” Toni blurts, because Fatin’s words seem better than anything else she can come up with on her own at the moment. “I’m sorry. I just thought if you wanted to talk about it you’d make the first move.”

“Tellin’ you I like you while you’re on top of me in my bed doesn’t count?” Shelby asks her, like she’s appalled, and Toni blushes.

“I wasn’t sure if you meant that, or if maybe—"

“So how about tellin’ you you’re my type, like, _several_ different times?” Shelby starts, and Toni’s face just gets hotter with embarrassment and shame. “Kissin’ you first in the lake? The storage shed? Under the stars? How about pullin’ you into the shower, is that a first move? Takin’ my clothes off? Takin’ _your_ clothes off? Or how about—?”

“Please stop,” Toni begs, mortified. “You’re right. I’m an idiot.”

“Thank you,” Shelby says with finality, and she doesn’t sound angry at all anymore, which is relieving; Toni hears her let out a heavy breath and then she falls completely silent for a long moment.

Toni chews on her lip and tries to figure out how to word what she wants to say next, and then finally she explains, “I’m not great at putting myself out there when… when I know I could get hurt.” It’s a little bit of a confession, at least: telling Shelby that she could hurt her—she could hurt her _very_ badly, maybe even worse than Regan, someday—and hesitantly she steps closer to Shelby’s stall and rests her hand on the edge of one of its walls, standing just outside. 

“You’re not the only one who’s been hurt before, Toni,” Shelby says, and Toni nods her head even though Shelby can’t see it.

“Yeah, but you’re so—I can tell you get stronger, in the end, when people leave you. You’re so confident in who you are and what you want anyway; it’s like you want them to see that you can do it all without them. I wish I could be that way. When people leave me, I totally crumble. I get weaker.” There’s a long silence on the other side of the curtain, and Toni second-guesses herself. “If I’m not explaining it right—”

“No, you are,” Shelby says softly, and Toni lets out a sigh of relief and waits for her to say more, because she sounds like she wants to. “Maybe I could teach you.”

Toni bites back a smile at the idea, mumbles, “Please, I need it,” and suddenly the curtain shifts and Shelby’s peering out at her, her head exposed.

“Take your clothes off,” she says, and Toni just stares at her like she’s sure she hasn’t heard her correctly. “Unless you were plannin’ on leaving?”

Toni peels her shirt off hastily and fumbles for the clasp of her bra, then shrugs it off, takes her shorts and underwear down at the same time and then kicks her flip flops aside, and Shelby laughs a little at her eagerness and then reaches out and moves the curtain aside to pull Toni into the shower. Toni goes in for a kiss right away but Shelby puts a hand on her cheek and stops her, shaking her head. 

“Oh, no,” she teases. “You still have a few things to say to me first.”

“I really, _really_ like you,” Toni blurts right away, because that’s an obvious one, and the rest is just stream of consciousness, whatever pops into her head that she thinks Shelby might want to hear, “and I love learning new things about you, and watching the stars with you—and you’re _so_ hot, fuck, when you unhooked my bra in the lake and when you said _I’ll get you there_ , the way you sounded, that’s been on repeat for days in my head—”

Shelby’s just biting her lip the whole time, beaming at her, her eyes bright while she nods her head like she’s having a little trouble keeping up but wants Toni to know she’s listening, and it feels strangely freeing doing this, Toni realizes, so she just doesn’t stop. “—and I really just wanna get your number before we get out of here and then take you out once we get back to ASU, wherever you wanna go; I know you like bowling so we could do that, maybe a movie too, you like romcoms—”

Shelby pins her to the wall abruptly and kisses her hard, mumbles, “You remembered I like romcoms,” and Toni nods slowly, chasing her mouth when Shelby pulls away.

“I remember everything you told me about yourself,” she admits, and Shelby kisses her again; Toni feels a hand on her thigh and it’s the only warning she gets before Shelby’s fingers slide around to her inner thigh and then she’s touching her. Toni gasps and then breathes out, “You really like to just go for it, Jesus.”

“Makin’ up for lost time,” Shelby says, and lowers her head to suck hard at where Toni’s neck meets her shoulder, until Toni’s wet enough for her to press inside. 

Shelby pins her to the wall when her legs get unsteady and Toni grips her shoulders, moans loudly enough that it echoes in the shower room—she almost thinks she hears footsteps and barely-concealed laughter out in the hallway at some point, but she’s not enough in her right mind to care—and seconds after she comes she spins them around, pushes Shelby up against the wall and sinks to her knees. Shelby moans even louder than Toni had and her grip is tight in Toni’s hair the entire time. 

They sneak into the dining hall together later to grab leftover food, because neither of them has eaten dinner, and devour it all in Shelby’s cabin between breaks to make out or have sex again. Toni falls asleep naked in Shelby’s tiny single bed, one arm and leg slung over her body and her face buried contently in Shelby’s neck. 

Shelby forgets to set her alarm. 

Toni lifts her head groggily to the sound of frantic knocking on Shelby’s cabin door the following morning, then looks up at the clock on Shelby’s nightstand, sees they’re ten minutes late and immediately shakes Shelby awake. 

“What?” Shelby mumbles, rubbing at her eyes, and then she hears the knocking and suddenly she’s sitting up abruptly, glancing at the clock, then cursing quietly and scrambling from the bed to look for clothes.

Toni does the same: finds her clothes from last night and calls out, “One second!” before Shelby shoots her an alarmed look and Toni realizes they’re in _Shelby’s_ cabin, not Toni’s, so she definitely should’ve kept her mouth shut. “Fuck.”

When Shelby unlocks the door, Martha’s on the other side, much to Toni’s relief. She slips inside, grabs Toni by the wrist and explains, “There’s a supervisor on the way to each of your cabins,” before yanking her outside and hurrying her away. 

Linh is waiting with a clipboard and a disappointed look on her face by Toni’s cabin when Martha finally gets her there, and Toni knows her face is red when she rushes out, “Sorry, I woke up late and went…”

“To shower,” Martha blurts when Toni can’t come up with anything, but Toni’s hair isn’t wet and her clothes are grimy from yesterday’s activities and it’s a blatantly obvious lie. When Toni and Martha exchange looks, Martha looks apologetic. 

Linh sighs and looks her over, and Toni can visibly see her taking it all in: Shelby’s late, too, Toni wasn’t in her own cabin, is wearing dirty clothes, and is also just, like, obviously gay, even if Shelby isn’t. Plus, there are hickeys all over her neck, but Toni doesn’t realize that yet.

“I’m going to have to take this to Gretchen,” Linh says, like she doesn’t want to, and then she looks past Toni and when Toni turns she can see Shelby in the distance, looking upset as she talks with another supervisor. 

Ten minutes later, Toni and Shelby are both missing breakfast to sit in chairs in front of Gretchen’s desk, and Gretchen’s got her fingers interlocked in front of her, her elbows on her desk, and is sighing at them like she really doesn’t want to have to deal with this today. She closes her eyes and pinches the bridge of her nose, and Toni exhales and glances up at the ceiling, incredibly embarrassed. Shelby looks terrified beside her. 

“Four days,” Gretchen says at last. “You had _four_ more days to control yourselves.” She flips through two folders in front of her for a moment—Toni realizes they’re resumes, one for Shelby and one for Toni—and then murmurs to herself, “You two even go to the same university. Truly no excuse for this…” She closes the folders and shakes her head. 

“It was my fault,” Toni blurts before she can think about it. “Shelby was—”

“No doubt a willing participant,” Gretchen says evenly, and Toni watches her eyes fall to Toni’s neck. Toni lifts a hand to cover the hickeys she’s just remembered are all over one side of it and blushes furiously. 

“I started it,” Toni lies anyway, and out of the corner of her eye she sees Shelby turning to look over at her. “So if you’re planning on firing anyone—”

“Firing?” Gretchen interjects, looking appalled by the idea. “And leave us understaffed with just a few days left to go? You must think I’m insane.”

“You’re not firing us?” Shelby breathes out, audibly relieved. 

“No, but you can say goodbye to your early mornings,” Gretchen tells them, smiling thinly. “The cafeteria staff could use some help with food prep. Maybe with an earlier wakeup time you’ll be less inclined to… stay up late.” She waves a hand at them like she’s dismissing them, and when Toni and Shelby both rise hastily to their feet, she adds, “Now, had you two been caught doing this just a couple of weeks in, you’d have absolutely been fired. So be glad it wasn’t going on then.”

“Right. It wasn’t,” Toni blurts unconvincingly, and Shelby glares at her like she wants her to shut up and practically wrenches her from the office.

Her voice is warm, though, when she leads Toni back to her cabin and slips inside with her to watch her get changed into fresh clothes. “Did you really just try to take the bullet for the both of us?”

“I don’t even like this job,” Toni says, pulling her shirt off, but her cheeks get a little pink anyway at Shelby’s affectionate look. “You do.”

“Lord, I really did that,” Shelby says abruptly, before Toni can pull a new shirt on, and Toni sees she’s staring oddly at Toni’s neck. “I don’t even remember it.”

“I do,” Toni mumbles, and then rolls her eyes at Shelby’s sly smile. “Are you really just gonna stand here and watch me take my clothes off? Don’t you have children to micromanage?”

Shelby looks at the clock over Toni’s shoulder and then says, “Breakfast won’t be over for another fifteen minutes. That’s plenty of time.” 

Toni almost asks _for what_ but then Shelby’s reaching out and pulling Toni close and Toni’s laughing against her lips. 

“Were you listening to anything Gretchen just said to us?”

“Yeah. I heard that it’s too late to fire us.”

Toni laughs again and lets Shelby cup her cheek and kiss her for a moment, then pulls away and tells her, “We’re gonna have so much fun in the fall, aren’t we?”

Shelby’s hands move to rest on her shoulders, her eyes rake down Toni’s body and she bites her lip and then teases, “I might even let you kiss me on the first date. Only if you let me pay, though.”

Toni snorts. “If _you_ pay?”

“Mhmm.” Shelby nods and her eyes drop to Toni’s mouth. “I like takin’ care of girls. You’re gonna find that out about me.”

Toni swallows thickly and thinks back, remembers a few things that make her body hot, and says dumbly, “Actually, I definitely get that vibe from you, now that you mention it.”

“Pretty much go all-in,” Shelby continues, almost like she hasn’t heard Toni at all, and one of her hands slides around to play with Toni’s hair, right above the nape of her neck, “once I really like someone.”

“I’m the same way,” Toni warns her, leaning into Shelby’s touch a little. “Really intense.” 

Shelby looks at her darkly. “Should be fun.”

A shiver runs down Toni’s spine and Shelby moves forward like she wants to kiss her again, but Toni’s legitimately worried about not being able to stop, so she just extricates herself with a groan and explains, “Breakfast,” then resumes getting changed. 

They enter the dining hall together just as the other counselors are starting to get their groups together, and Fatin’s right near the entrance; she perks up at the sight of them and says, “Hey, you’re alive! How was the shower last night?”

“The children, Fatin,” Linh hisses to her from nearby, and Fatin seizes the nearest child from her group and covers his ears.

“How was the shower last night?” she stage-whispers, and Shelby laughs but Toni just rolls her eyes and blushes. Fatin looks at Linh, suddenly, and then back at Toni and Shelby. “Wait, you’re not fired? All bets are off?”

“All bets are _not_ off,” Linh interjects, clearly trying to nip this in the bud, but Fatin’s already looking around for Carlos, spots him and makes eye contact, then nods her head at him and then gestures to Toni and Shelby. Carlos perks up right away, getting the message. “Fatin—” Linh warns shortly, and Fatin just smirks and shepherds her children out of the dining hall.

Toni splits off from Shelby to locate her group, and Martha’s nearby, waiting for Toni with a relieved look on her face. “She’s letting you stay?” Martha asks, and Toni nods gratefully at her.

“Thanks for trying to help me out.”

“Please tell me that what I walked in on this morning means you’ve finally gotten your crap together,” Martha sighs, and Toni laughs, a little embarrassed. 

“Yeah, Marty.” Then she turns away, locates Kevin, and tugs him close, ruffling his hair. “This little guy’s not gonna take the news too well, though.”

“What news?” Kevin asks, and Martha gives Toni a warning look, silently begging her not to crush this kid’s hopes and dreams just for the sake of her own ego.

“Um,” Toni starts, veering off-course abruptly at Martha’s expression, “they ran out of strawberry ice cream yesterday.”

“But I don’t even like strawberry ice cream…”

“Well, then, you’re handling it much better than I thought you would. Congratulations.” She releases Kevin and he blinks at her with confusion and then moves away. “Shelby goes to ASU,” Toni tells Martha when he’s out of earshot, and Martha just laughs at her and turns to leave.

“Of course she does.”

Toni’s last four days are her favorite ones, even with the earlier wakeup time. She catches up with Shelby at every meal and between every activity, and they find little deserted areas of the campground to make out in when they get the chance. Nora catches them once and that’s how she learns that the ban on hooking up is kind of unofficially lifted, which she’s _very_ happy about; Toni sees her holding hands with Quinn during their next meal. Between that, Carlos and Fatin, and the little bit of flirtation that starts up between Martha and Marcus, poor Linh hardly knows what to do with herself, as she’s evidently been handed the reins on keeping them all in line in this particular regard.

On the last night, the girls plan another night of drinking at the campfire to properly bookend their time together, and this time Toni sits pressed close to Shelby, and Shelby gets comfortably drunk and spends half the time giggling flirtatiously into Toni’s ear and nipping at it with her teeth, and Toni’s hand clenches on Shelby’s knee while she blushes, successfully distracted from the rest of the group.

“We’re gonna need three group chats,” Fatin stands up and proposes to them all eventually, like she’s making an announcement, and she holds up three fingers to punctuate her statement, swaying drunkenly as she goes on. “One for us and the boys, but only the cool ones. Carlos, Quinn, Marcus. I have Carlos’s number and I’ll get Marcus’s tomorrow. Nora, you get Quinn’s if you haven’t already.”

“Aye-aye,” Nora agrees, saluting. 

“Second: one for just us girls, _obviously_. I want to keep up with you bitches after this without the boys listening in.”

“And third?” Martha asks, confused, because that seems to have just about covered it, and Fatin smirks.

“For the six of us,” Fatin gestures to everyone other than Toni and Shelby, “so that we can all gossip about how fucking _disgustingly_ into each other these two are. Martha, I expect daily updates from ASU. Tell me _everything_ ; I’m invested.”

Toni’s half-paying attention because Shelby’s mouth is still on her ear, and kind of comes to a little when she notices everyone looking at them and laughing. “I missed something?” she slurs, and Shelby turns Toni’s head with her hand and kisses her kind of sloppily. Toni gives in right away.

“I rest my case,” Fatin says, gesturing to them, and Toni nearly falls backward off of the log when Shelby tries to press in closer. 

They say their goodbyes in the afternoon the following day, a few hours after the last of the children are gone, and Toni actually thinks she might miss some of the other counselors—not the boys, really, but Leah’s space case vibe amuses her a little, she’s actually got a lot in common with Rachel, Dot and Fatin are admittedly kind of a riot, and Nora’s strange but very sweet. And Toni knows she’ll still see Shelby and Martha plenty after this, and they’re who she cares about most, but it feels like the end of something special anyway. Toni’s actually a little bit sad about it—spends about half an hour that day just sitting by the lake and looking around at it all so that she really commits Camp Sunny Lake to memory. These past six weeks certainly haven’t gone how she thought they would, but she’s gotten so much more out of them than some extra pocket change, that’s for sure.

Fatin’s already gathered all of their phone numbers for the group chat, but when Shelby wraps her arms around Toni and hugs her goodbye, she’s got a folded up piece of paper clenched in one hand anyway with her number on it, and she slips it into the back pocket of Toni’s shorts and then says, “Text me when you get back.”

“Okay. See you soon?” Toni asks, and “soon” probably isn’t generous enough; Shelby lives off the north side of their campus and Toni’s off the west side, so there’s maybe a ten-minute drive between them. Toni’s been flirting with the idea of just asking Shelby to come over tonight, but on the other hand she _does_ want to give Martha at least twenty-four hours of peace and quiet after the six weeks they’ve had. 

“Very soon,” Shelby agrees, her chin on Toni’s shoulder, and then she turns her head and murmurs, “I don’t have a roommate,” right into Toni’s ear, like she’s reading her mind.

“ _So_ soon,” Toni amends, an almost pained expression on her face, and Shelby pulls back and then smiles into the kiss they share. Toni mumbles into her mouth, “Maybe, like, in-two-hours soon.”

Shelby’s smile gives way to a laugh as she breaks their kiss, and when Toni opens her eyes she sees that Shelby’s looking back at her brightly. “It’s a date.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! I have another idea in the works that's a little angstier and from Shelby's POV (not a companion piece to anything else I've written) but we'll see if it goes anywhere. Regardless, I'll continue to write for the fandom as promised!


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